SECTION A i) One cultural aspect in the short story that I want my students to be able to recognize and understand is the

tradition of slavery. The tradition of slavery can clearly be seen by looking at how a person becomes a slave, the way they lead their life and analyzing the reasons for the slaves to be whipped. This aspect should be given more emphasis because the students never experience slavery as it is not practiced in Malaysia or any neighbouring countries. Although Malaysians are of multiracial, they are not exposed to racism and manage to live together harmoniously. Thus, by understanding slavery, the students would learn to appreciate the value of being grateful, be patriotic and treat everyone equally.

What is Slavery

Slavery can be defined as to be controlled by another person or persons so that your will does not determine your life's course, and rewards for your work and sacrifices are not yours to claim. According to the Slavery Convention (article 1.1) in 1926, slavery is"...the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised." As mentioned by Kevin Bales, one of the world's leading experts on contemporary slavery, "people are enslaved by violence and held against their wills for purposes of exploitation."1. Slavery ... is a social-economic system under which certain persons - known as slaves - are deprived of personal freedom and compelled to work.

Slaves are held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase, or birth, and are deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to receive compensation (such as wages) in return for their labor. As such, slavery is one form of unfree labour.

In its narrowest sense, the word slave refers to people who are treated as the property of another person, household, company, corporation or government. This is referred to as chattel slavery."

How a person become a slave

The brutal institution of slavery -- the ownership of one person by another -- has existed for many thousands of years. From the 15th century, a savage new stage in the slave trade occurred. Europeans began capturing Africans and selling them for profit as slaves to work in European colonies in America and elsewhere. This resulted in the transportation of 12-15 million Africans as slaves. Upon their arrival in America the slave traders auctioned off their African captives to plantation owners. As the African captives were just seen as property, not as people with rights, families were usually split up forever. In 1661, Virginia colonists enacted a law that legitimized African slavery and provided that the status of an African child would be determined by the status of its mother. If the mother of a child was a slave, then her child was doomed to slavery. This was what happened to Doughlass. Although there was a rumor saying that his father is his master, he still considered as a slave as her mother, Harriet Bailey is a slave.

How does slaves lead their life By 1860, almost 1/3 of the population was made up of slaves in the south. Most slaves worked on cotton plantations. The men and women planted, harvested, and removed weeds and other unwanted plants from the land. Teenagers worked in the fields, too. Work for children wasnt too hard. They pulled out weeds, picked insects off of the crops, and took water to other workers. Slaves lives didnt matter to anyone. An owner of a slave could do anything to them. They thought of slaves as items you buy instead of human beings. If a slave didnt work hard, their

owner usually didnt treat their slave well. Some owners treated their slaves well, so they would do good work because slaves were very expensive. Some people did not treat slaves well. They sometimes beat slaves, and they also punished them very badly. The main reason for this is because the owners had complete power over their slaves, and they thought their slaves would work harder if they were afraid of being punished by their owners. The slaves worked very hard, but the owners did not pay them. It was hard to keep a family together for slaves. This was because when slaves got sold, they would most likely get split up and would have to go to different plantations to work. Once a family member was sold away to another plantation, they sometimes would never see their family again. Many slaves wanted to visit their families, but they were too far away or they may not have even known where their family was. Some baby slaves didnt even know their family because some of them were sold right after they were born. As for Doughlass, he was separated from his mother since he was an infant. He implies to be with his mother for not more than 5 times as his mother was hired by Mr. Stewart who lives about 12 miles from their house.

One area of their lives in which slaves were able to exercise some autonomy from their masters was creating a family. Slave owners felt it was to their advantage to allow slaves to marry, because any children from the marriage would add to their wealth. According to law, a child took on the legal status of its mother; a child born to a slave mother would in turn become a slave, even if the father was free. Slaves usually had to ask permission from their masters to marry, however, and slave marriages had no legal protection. Masters could break up marriages and separate families as they wished.