Option A:

In her preface, Jacobs says that she does not care to excite sympathy for her suffering but to "arouse the women of the North to a realizing sense of the the condition of two millions of women at the South." Write an essay in which you analyze  the ways Jacobs analyzes and tries to influence her readers. You might focus on questions like: Why is she suspicious of sympathy? What does she mean by "realizing sense"? Why does she address women? What kind of reader does she want? How does she want the reader to understand her choices and decisions?

As you prepare to write your first draft, make a list of specific examples that you might  use in your analysis of Jacobs work. Be sure to take into account those sections that address the reader directly, and also those that seem to give evidence of Jacobs as a writer crafting her material by highlighting some incidents and and passing over others, shaping scenes and sentences, and organizing chapters.

Note: This assignment is adapted from "Questions for a Second Reading" #1 on page 465 of Ways of Reading. Some of the wording of the original has been preserved.

Option B:

This text makes it difficult to say what we are prepared to say: that slaves were illiterate, uneducated simple in their speech and thought. Jacob's situation was not typical, to be sure, but she challenges the assumptions we bring to our imagination of this country's people and its past. Write an essay in which you explain how this essay provides challenges your assumptions about the lives of slaves. In other words, compare what you imagined the life of slaves to be like to what you encountered in this text. Include examples of both the physical and psychological realities of slavery.

Before you begin drafting, review and compare your answers to the first and last reading questions for this selection. Free write for twenty minutes on the differences you not between your first and second answer.

Note: This assignment is loosely based on "Questions for a Second Reading" #1 on page 465 of Ways of Reading. Some of the wording from the original has been preserved.

Option C:

One of the epigraph's to Jacob's story states that "Northerners . . . have no conception of the depth of degradation involved in that word, Slavery . . ."  Write an essay that analyzes Jacob's argument about slavery and degradation. To do this you need select and answer relevant questions like these: What does Jacob's story teach about degradation? What aspects of human dignity are degraded by slavery? How does slavery degrade the slave? How does slavery degrade America's political and religious culture? In what physical and psychological ways are Jacobs and her family degraded? How does this degradation shape their sense of self? their dream of freedom? their belief in justice?

Before you begin drafting, review your answers to reading questions. Free write for twenty minutes on points from your writing and our discussion that relate to the theme of degradation in Jacob's work.

Option D:

In class, we talked about our assumptions about how the institution of slavery entrenched itself in American Life. One conclusion we reached was that slave owners engaged in many practices that enabled them to manage and intimidate a large, fluid and growing population of slaves. Write an essay that makes an argument about how white society controlled its slaves physically and psychologically. In getting prepared to write about this topic, you should review your answers to the following reading questions: How do the slave owners use food and clothing to control their slaves? How do the slave owners use family ties to control their slaves? How do the slave owner's use sexuality to control their slaves? In addition to those noted in the previous three questions, what other methods of control do the slave owners exert over their slaves? In writing this essay, you do not need to cover every method of control you notice in the text.