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Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl’ Slavery Imagery in the Retreat in Harriet Jacobs ‘Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl’ By Darcy Gaugler Harriet Jacobs (alias Linda Brent) is deemed one of the writers of a classic slave narrative depicting one of the most dehumanizing institutions in American history: slavery. Throughout her discourse, she uses metaphors and language filled with poignant words such as “darkness” and “stifling” to illuminate slavery in all of its evil masks and faces. She explains the effects of slavery on a people by using fierce prose in describing her own personal experiences so one can better see the crippling effects of slavery as a whole. At one particularly eerie point in her life, readers witness her as debilitated and shut away from air and light for a total of seven years in an effort to escape the slavery. It is in this incident where the reader can draw parallels between the seven-year retreat and the stifling institution of slavery because in describing both she uses similar metaphors, images, and descriptive words. The author, Harriet Jacobs, throughout her narrative describes the cruelties of slavery vividly. In slavery, a person is completely shut out from things normally given to humans. When incidents, life, slave, girl, slavery, linda, slave, retreat, one, slaves, jacobs, family, child, master, effects, narrative, hole, describes, darkness, children, between, words, very, throughout, shut, love, living, institution, herself, harriet, escape, describing, depicts, brent, 438, years, whole, stifling, relations