Which two sentences in this excerpt from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl demonstrate how Harriet Ann Jacobs uses a narrative structure and conversational tone to directly appeal to her readers’ sympathy?
With all these thoughts revolving in my mind, and seeing no other way of escaping the doom I so much dreaded, I made a headlong plunge. Pity me, and pardon me, O virtuous reader! You never knew what it is to be a slave; to be entirely unprotected by law or custom; to have the laws reduce you to the condition of a chattel, entirely subject to the will of another.You never exhausted your ingenuity in avoiding the snares, and eluding the power of a hated tyrant; you never shuddered at the sound of his footsteps, and trembled within hearing of his voice. I know I did wrong. No one can feel it more sensibly than I do. The painful and humiliating memory will haunt me to my dying day.Still, in looking back, calmly, on the events of my life, I feel that the slave woman ought not to be judged by the same standard as others.
1. "Pity me, and pardon me, O virtuous reader! You never knew what it is to be a slave; to be entirely unprotected by law or custom; to have the laws reduce you to the condition of a chattel, entirely subject to the will of another."
2. "No one can feel it more sensibly than I do. The painful and humiliating memory will haunt me to my dying day."