The Construct of Freedom: Comparing Baldwin and Jacobs

America is often colloquially referred to as the “land of the free”. However, what said freedom actually looks like differs depending on one’s perspective. In “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” by Harriet Jacobs, because the events take place before the American civil war, there was a very basic standard of “freedom” for Black Americans, which was not to be enslaved or owned by another person. In “Going to Meet the Man” by James Baldwin, however, the main character desires the freedom to oppress Black Americans and enact racism upon them. Not only is freedom a social construct, the idea of “absolute freedom” is neither realistic nor achievable, because one idea of freedom may infringe on another’s idea of freedom, as occurs in these texts. In comparing the two, it is made clear that the freedom of Black Americans directly clashes with the freedom of White American oppressors.