Very soon after my return to Baltimore, my mistress, Lucretia, died, leaving her husband and one child, Amanda; and in a very short time after her death, Master Andrew died. Now all the property of my old master, slaves included, was in the hands of strangers,—strangers who had had nothing to do with accumulating it. Not a slave was left free. All remained slaves, from the youngest to the oldest. If any one thing in my experience, more than another, served to deepen my conviction of the infernal character of slavery, and to fill me with unutterable loathing of slaveholders, it was their base ingratitude to my poor old grandmother. She had served my old master faithfully from youth to old age. She had been the source of all his wealth; she had peopled his plantation with slaves; she had become a great grandmother in his service. She had rocked him in infancy, attended him in childhood, served him through life, and at his death wiped from his icy brow the cold death-sweat, and closed his eyes forever. She was nevertheless left a slave—a slave for life—a slave in the hands of strangers; and in their hands she saw her children, her grandchildren, and her great-grandchildren, divided, like so many sheep, without being gratified with the small privilege of a single word, as to their or her own destiny. And, to cap the climax of their base ingratitude and fiendish barbarity, my grandmother, who was now very old, having outlived my old master and all his children, having seen the beginning and end of all of them, and her present owners finding she was of but little value, her frame already racked with the pains of old age, and complete helplessness fast stealing over her once active limbs, they took her to the woods, built her a little hut, put up a little mud-chimney, and then made her welcome to the privilege of supporting herself there in perfect loneliness; thus virtually turning her out to die! If my poor old grandmother now lives, she lives to suffer in utter loneliness; she lives to remember and mourn over the loss of children, the loss of grandchildren, and the loss of great-grandchildren. They are, in the language of the slave’s poet, Whittier,—

“Gone, gone, sold and gone To the rice swamp dank and lone, Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings, Where the noisome insect stings, Where the fever-demon strews Poison with the falling dews, Where the sickly sunbeams glare Through the hot and misty air:— Gone, gone, sold and gone To the rice swamp dank and lone, From Virginia hills and waters— Woe is me, my stolen daughters!”

The hearth is desolate. The children, the unconscious children, who once sang and danced in her presence, are gone. She gropes her way, in the darkness of age, for a drink of water. Instead of the voices of her children, she hears by day the moans of the dove, and by night the screams of the hideous owl. All is gloom. The grave is at the door. And now, when weighed down by the pains and aches of old age, when the head inclines to the feet, when the beginning and ending of human existence meet, and helpless infancy and painful old age combine together—at this time, this most needful time, the time for the exercise of that tenderness and affection which children only can exercise towards a declining parent—my poor old grandmother, the devoted mother of twelve children, is left all alone, in yonder little hut, before a few dim embers. She stands—she sits—she staggers—she falls—she groans—she dies—and there are none of her children or grandchildren present, to wipe from her wrinkled brow the cold sweat of death, or to place beneath the sod her fallen remains. Will not a righteous God visit for these things?

The following is an extract from the memoir Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass (1845). Douglass reflects on his grandmother's lifelong enslavement and her abandonment by her owners in old age.

Frederick Douglass, author, writing in the memoir *Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave* (1845).

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

Drama

Prose fiction

Identify three choices of language in the opening section, from “Very soon after my return” to “from the youngest to the oldest”, and state what each suggests about the treatment of enslaved people. Quote the relevant words.

Identify three details in the account of the grandmother’s service, from “She had served my old master faithfully” to “closed his eyes forever”, and briefly explain how each establishes her importance to her enslaver. Quote the relevant words.

Identify three features of the language in the quoted poem, from “Gone, gone, sold and gone” to “my stolen daughters!”, and state how each conveys separation or suffering. Quote the relevant words.

Analyse how repetition and parallel syntax develop the grandmother’s loss of freedom and family in the sentence beginning “She was nevertheless left a slave” and the later sentence beginning “If my poor old grandmother now lives”.

Analyse how Douglass uses contrast and irony in the account beginning “And, to cap the climax” and ending “turning her out to die!” to expose the cruelty of the grandmother’s abandonment.

Analyse how sound imagery and changes in sentence rhythm create an atmosphere of abandonment in the final paragraph, from “The hearth is desolate” to “The grave is at the door”.

To what extent does {{src:A}}the extract{{/src}} present the grandmother’s abandonment as a consequence of treating people as property, rather than only as the ingratitude of particular owners? Refer to the opening transfer of ownership and the account ending “turning her out to die!”

Evaluate the effectiveness of Douglass’s movement from the conditional statement “If my poor old grandmother now lives”, through Whittier’s poem, to the imagined scene ending “she dies”. How does this movement shape the force and credibility of his indictment?

Discuss how the echo between the grandmother’s care for her dying enslaver and the care denied to her combines with the final appeal to “a righteous God” to shape {{src:A}}the extract{{/src}}’s moral judgement.

English A (Lang & Lit)

English A: Language and Literature explores the complex nature of language and its role in communication and culture. Students analyze a wide range of literary and non-literary texts, developing critical thinking and communication skills while examining how language shapes meaning and identity.

S.2 Prose non-fiction

Question 1

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