Elisabeth Schauer
Mary F. Lyons
LCS 360 A
March 4th 2014

The Importance of Religion throughout African Americans in the 1900’s

Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Birds Sing” and Solomon Northrup, “Twelve Years a Slave” are two memoirs with similar themes that encompassed their societies. These literally works depicts many life stories in which thematic concerns of religion, racism, chauvinism, education, poverty and seclusion carry an American dream. One quickly notices that they both relate in the way they pass out their different themes especially the theme of religion in this case. Religion is the main concern in this article considered for literary analysis. Therefore, the two authors used religion as part of their larger story to bring out a more or less the same thematic concept.
Maya Angelou composed a stunning and energizing personal history titled “I know why the caged birds sing” of her hardship in her growth as a dark young woman in the southern states of America. Set in the 1930's the place the legacy of subjection remained. One thing, which made this literature work so fascinating to peruse, was the way that this book had such a variety of topics, which are both relative and imperative to us today like the absence of equivalent chances, prejudice, bias, training, neediness, seclusion, religion and The American Dream.
On the other hand, in his work Solomon Northrup’s, “Twelve Years a Slave” shows the pain and ill-use encountered by Solomon Northrup in his 12 years of subjugation. For instance, the huge number of different slaves hijacked in Africa and sold over the US is a inexcusable case of the torment. This was one social order that effects upon an alternate assembly of individuals. The book “Twelve Years a Slave” depicts the detestations of subjection in America and shows the disgrace of the framework, utilizing the mind-blowing incongruity as a part of the story of Solomon Northrup. Since he had a document that showed he was a free dark man, others dealt with him as a kindred man. However, after his abduction he recognized as property, such as a creature. In large extent, slavery theme with racism coming in later does play an emphasis on the theme of religion, evident all across the authors work.
An introduction of the theme of religion in these two memoirs begins with the recall of the Christian faith doctrine calendar through important dates. This is evident in both ways where both Maya Angelou and Solomon Northup show a connection through their different environments. First, Maya reviews an Easter Sunday at the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church in Arkansas. Her mother made her an uncommon Easter dress from lavender taffeta, and Maya thought the dress would make her resemble the blonde haired blue-eyed motion picture star that she wished to be. She abandons her congregation set to head off to the bathroom and does not make it; she runs from the congregation, embarrassed, yet happy to be out of the chapel and far from the children who torment her, and make her adolescence considerably harder than it as of recently was.

In the twelve years, a Baptist evangelist named William Ford buys a slave also in the wake of surviving an episode of smallpox, Northup and Eliza. Touched by Eliza's requests, Ford goings-on to buy her young girl Emily also; however, Freeman declines to offer her. Portage ends up being a kind expert; Northup composes "there never was a more kind, honorable, genuine, Christian man". Passage's estate gets a few miles Southwest of New Orleans, in the Great Pine Woods on Louisiana's Red River. The author gets something to do stacking and hacking logs at Ford's timber plant, and he chooses to remunerate his expert's graciousness. Understanding that Ford transports his timber via land at extraordinary liability, Northup devises a set of pontoons to convey them by trench, extraordinarily expanding Ford's benefits. He likewise assembles a weaving machine for the manor "worked so well. I proceeded in the work of making weavers"(Northrup).
The theme of religion again is evident through submission and author and reader interaction. For instance, in I know why caged birds sing, Maya inquires as to whether she cherishes her, Momma reacts, "God is affection. Only stress over if you are being a great young lady, then He will love you". In I Know Why the Caged Birds Sing, the individuals in Stamps appear to clutch religion so hard that it displaces other human associations. It characterizes connections in view of the utilization of honorifics. It sets up guidelines for living, and it gives comfort in abuse. Maya seemed unquestionably confounded about religion. No big surprise she appears to pee her jeans at chapel. There seemed no alteration in Northrup as an individual; just a degenerate framework pronounced that he now could be possessed as nothing said overall. Just a paper could take away his humankind and religion in that case. The slaves felt like real experts and merchants, and they felt that they did not simply have the right to treat their slaves. They preferred additional guarantee of a right of significantly owning their kindred man and some form of religious abiding.
Indeed, in the domain of religion, slavery mutilated Protestant Christianity by testing the Reformation's essential principle, specifically, the ministry of all devotees, and the fairness of each soul before God. To numerous slaveholders, the asset standard implied that, as property, a slave has no soul. These are those who required light-cleaned individuals to the pastor to show them how to accept and act as Christians. White Americans underestimated these flexibilities as their national inheritance. These were flexibility of love, to vote, one's work, and to wed as one picks were for oppressed dark Americans.
Religion is a theme depicted throughout these two literature works and with a connection to the African American church, which comes up through the slavery of Africans in America. The African American church has assumed a significant part in country groups. In 1933, Mays and Nicholson reported, ''75% of all Negro chapels are provincial''. Unquestionably, the congregation was a real constraint in Maya Angelou's life, specifically in the rustic group of stamps. It is no accident that the opening of the, I Know Why the Caged Birds Sing takes put in chapel. For sure, Maya and her family appear to have dedicated an extraordinary arrangement of time to chapel and church-related exercises. In Singing, Swinging, ‘and Getting' Merry like Christmas, Angelou’s memoirs, Angelou composes that, she had experienced childhood in a Christian Church where her uncle was the superintendent of the Sunday school, and the grandma; was considered the mother of the Church. Until she turned thirteen and left Arkansas for California, every Sunday. She stayed at least six hours in chapel. Monday night’s her Momma took her to introduce board meeting; Tuesdays the Church Mothers met; Wednesday was a day for a petition to God while Thursday, a Deacons congregation took part. Planning for Sunday was for Fridays and Saturdays. Maya's grandma was furiously religious, and her religious feelings were a supporting compel in her life. As a Mother of the Church, ‘‘an honorific title held for the wife of the organizer or the most seasoned and regarded parts''. Momma's religious power distinguished. She starts every day on her knees in a request to God and deliberately educates her grandchildren in the methods for the congregation, obliging strict recognition of Biblical decrees. The point when Maya guiltlessly starts a sentence with ''incidentally, '' her rebuff for taking the Lord's name in vain. The occurrence is illustrative of Momma's significant.(Angelou)
In the Maya’s book, religion is very significant to Momma and the black African community of Stamps. It keeps them going through the surface of rough times. Maya rose up with a stout sagacity of religion, and that served as her ethical guide. However, she is enough of a down-to-earth person to see how people utilize it to benefit themselves feel better about hardship. In addition, she does not consider this is a good mechanism. In the Northup’s book, even in the dominion of religion, slavery biased Protestant Christianity by thought-provoking the Reformation’s vital ideology, that is, the ministry of all followers, the similarity of every person before God. To many slaveholders, the belongingness meant that, as an asset, slaves could not possess any soul.