Hamlet and The Book Of Negroes

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by Stacey Sengeredo3 views·Updated Jan 20, 2022
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  1. Hi everyone, my name is Stacy Sang Garrido and today I will be analyzing
  2. the book of negroes meets Hamlet.
  3. So, to give you a bit of an introduction
  4. in this presentation, I will be analyzing
  5. Lawrence Hills, the book of negroes
  6. and Hamlet by William Shakespeare.
  7. So, in analyzing the book of negroes,
  8. Aminata is a West African girl who was abducted from her village when she was a child.
  9. She was forced to travel by sea
  10. as she was sent to live as a slave.
  11. She later fights her way to freedom by serving the british
  12. in the Revolutionary War.
  13. She ends her journey
  14. traveled by traveling back to Africa after long years of suffering,
  15. analyzing hamed.
  16. Hamlet, however, is the Prince of Denmark who mysteriously
  17. lost his father.
  18. Hamlet is faced by trials and tribulations as
  19. he tries to find his father's murderer,
  20. whilst keeping his senses together
  21. insane.
  22. So, let's talk about dehumanization
  23. as a topic. In both books,
  24. society has its ways to make people feel withdrawn
  25. and rejected from society.
  26. In both the book of negroes and Hamlet,
  27. both writers are able to convey the message and the idea of alienation
  28. in society
  29. that both Aminata and Hamlet endured.
  30. Both characters are dehumanized and deprived of their basic human rights.
  31. That causes others to lack sympathy for the characters.
  32. This ultimately leads to the suffering of both characters
  33. dehumanization in the book of negroes.
  34. So, there are a few quotes here
  35. that can further prove
  36. that indeed
  37. Agneta went through dehumanization
  38. during her time as a slave,
  39. I did not recognize myself, I had no clothes,
  40. no beauty,
  41. no hair
  42. and no womanhood.
  43. I concluded that no place on earth was entirely safe for an african.
  44. So what does she mean exactly by this?
  45. This means that she finds that this may have been her purpose in life
  46. to be used solely as a slave and to work for other people.
  47. Without taking into consideration
  48. the belief of freedom and the security she once had.
  49. So,
  50. the idea of becoming someone else's slave dehumanizes
  51. and devalues the lives of West Africans.
  52. Their entire voice feels threatened by the existence of the british slave traders.
  53. So now we're going to talk about Hamlet's deep personalization.
  54. There are a few quotes
  55. from Hamlet
  56. and they say
  57. I am pigeon livered and like go
  58. in heaven sent hither to see
  59. if your messenger find him as you go up the stairs into the lobby,
  60. hamed ventures into discussions about his existence.
  61. He does not think that he is detached
  62. from his body
  63. or from his surroundings.
  64. So,
  65. due to people having their mixed feelings towards Hamlet and calling
  66. him senile Hamlet has found no value left for his life.
  67. So let's talk about lack of sympathy in the book of negroes.
  68. So
  69. at first you see the pair, this is actually a scene from the movie,
  70. I lived in terror
  71. that the capture would beat us boil us and eat us.
  72. But they began with humiliation.
  73. They tore the clothes behind our backs.
  74. If I catch you again dressing white,
  75. I will shave you like a lamp and burn every single thing in Georgia's.
  76. Huh?
  77. So here before the captors would begin to use them as slaves. They first tore the
  78. clothes off their backs and they whipped them in front of the whole society
  79. and the whole village just to dehumanize and to embarrass the west Africans.
  80. The statements above show that the slave traders
  81. had no sympathy for human life whatsoever.
  82. As long as you were african, you were not safe.
  83. So now let's talk about lack of sympathy
  84. in Hamlet,
  85. Claudia, Sharlow shows lack of sympathy for the death of King Hamlet.
  86. This shows that Claudia's personality and the amount of affection he has for Hamlet
  87. is close to nil.
  88. When Hamlet's father passed away, Claudius did not even spend a year morning.
  89. He instead spent a few months and then proceeded to attempt to
  90. marry Gertrude Hamlet's mother and the um wife of the late king.
  91. Hm
  92. Aminata and Hamlet transition into heroes as both books progress.
  93. So, in the book of negroes, Aminata is introduced to the idea of the book of negroes,
  94. which is used to register the names of people who will depart to nova Scotia
  95. in hopes for the true reunion
  96. with freedom from slavery
  97. and the quote is you will spread the word amongst your people,
  98. you will help us register them
  99. in due time. You will collect names
  100. ages and how they can serve the british.
  101. So Amanda has a task to put the knowledge of many languages into good use
  102. our first opportunity to help others firsthand
  103. and to hear different stories
  104. who, like her,
  105. suffer from oppression and experienced tragedies that go along with slave trade.
  106. She becomes the speaking and communication tool between the West Africans
  107. and the british slave traders because of her quick wickedness.
  108. So because she could easily learn the language of the slave traders, she became
  109. the language tools. She could break the language barrier between the two,
  110. The two groups of people.