As Professor Murphy says in the feedback, this draft is basically basically summarizing, with few ideas of my own. Later I learn that my audience is my classmates and the professor, who are all quite familiar with the materials, so I don't need to summarize the plots much. Instead, I should express my own ideas and prove them more.

The Incidents in the Life of Slave Girl shows a world I seldom learn about and know little. I wonder how Linda made the decision to hide in her grandmother’s loft and finally escape to north with her children, since this decision was quite hard to make for the enslaved people at that time. Because few of them can read or know about the situation in north; all they see in their entire life may just be other enslaved people suffer and suffer and die. Also, Linda’s grandmother doesn’t want her to do so.

I think that the all the main plots before this adventure are paving the way for it: Linda doesn’t understand she’s a slave before six, she learns read and write, the pain she suffers as an enslaved person who has to submit to his/her owner, different choices her uncles make, other people’s experiences, and so on.

As the author mentions in Chapter 1: Childhood, “I was born a slave; but I never knew it till six years of happy childhood had passed away”, Linda has two identification about herself: one is a slave, which is told by others after she is six; one is a normal free person, which is her own feeling before six. And since she learns read and write, she is intelligent enough to think about her own life: “I was now old enough (twelve) to begin to think of the future; and again and again I asked myself what they would do with me.” Clearly, Linda thinks deep about her life and her identification——she chooses a normal free person.

The experiences of other enslaved people the author mentions in Chapter 3: The Slaves’ New Year’s Day, also plays an important role on the decision Linda makes later. “I saw a mother lead seven children to the auction-block. She knew that some of them would be taken from her; but they took all. The children were sold to a slave-trader, and their mother was brought by a man in her own town. Before night her children were all far away.” Linda saw a poor enslaved mother lose all her children hopelessly: “she wrung her hands in anguish, and exclaimed, ‘Gone! All gone! Why don't God kill me?’” I believe this experience shock Linda a lot, which makes her try everything to protect her children when she become a mother later.

The pain she suffers as an enslaved person also helps her make this essential decision. As Chapter 4: The Slave Who Dare to Feel Like a Man mentions the first time for Linda to be punished, she is forced to walk barefoot on snow. “I took them off, and my stockings also. She then sent me a long distance, on an errand. As I went through the snow, my bare feet tingled. That night I was very hoarse; and I went to bed thinking the next day would find me sick, perhaps dead.” Her owner, Dr Flint, also torture and force her to have a sexual relationship with him.

Linda’s two uncles show two different choices to her. Benjamin escapes to the north even suffers a lot of doing so; Peter is bought by Linda’s grandmother after many years’ hard working. Benjamin and Linda have a talk before he leaves. “He grew vexed, and asked if poverty and hardships with freedom, were not preferable to our treatment in slavery. ‘Linda,’ he continued, ‘we are dogs here; foot-balls, cattle, everything that's mean. No, I will not stay. Let them bring me back. We don't die but once.’” This talk may influence Linda deeply that even Benjamin knows he might be caught and put into jail, might experience poverty and hardship in north. With understanding all the costs and risk, he still decides to escape, for freedom.

The potential arguments may go against my opinion is that Linda may just revolt her destiny instead of enduring like other enslaved people because she learns much and is able to read and write while most enslaved people don’t. Chapter 7: What Slaves Are Taught To Think Of The North shows that many enslaved people are ignorant about things in north. “One woman begged me to get a newspaper and read it over. She said her husband told her that the black people had sent word to the queen of 'Merica that they were all slaves; that she didn't believe it, and went to Washington city to see the president about it. They quarrelled; she drew her sword upon him, and swore that he should help her to make them all free. That poor, ignorant woman thought that America was governed by a Queen, to whom the President was subordinate. I wish the President was subordinate to Queen Justice.”