Sojourner Truth

People even now-a-days edit essays, papers, and interviews before they are published. Whether it is for what they think the public will want, or for their own personal satisfaction. Or it could possibly be just so that the audience better understands the work. I will explain why they might have changed the way that Sojourner Truth’s speech was edited so. How it may have appealed to certain people or just personal satisfaction.

In the original, Sojourner used mostly southern slang of the time. Of course the people who both surround her and live in that region will clearly understand what she means. Other people might not though. They may be completely confused and not able to understand the subject. This can cause confusion and many misunderstandings. The editor may have wanted to avoid all of these confusions and such things. That may have been the reason that they edited it so.

Another thing that they could have possibly thought is that nobody would take it seriously if they began to read a paper and saw that it was all completely in southern slave slang. By changing it to more proper terms, the author may have thought that they were allowing it to appeal to more audiences than it would by leaving it original. Choosing certain words over others allowed the editor to greatly control the audience and the way the audience perceived the message.

In the original speech, Sojourner Truth uses a lot of different comparisons to what other people say to prove her point. She compares her personal experiences to what people have said to her. For example, when she said that she can eat as much as a man and work as much as a man, if not more. This was a good use of hard facts that Truth used to help back up her side of the story and how she views everything. It can help people to actually see the other side of the story so that they are not just one-sided on the topic. This can force people to be open-minded and this gives room for other’s opinions to get inside and alter their judgment.

Another thing that she did was use that fact that somebody else brought religion into it. Many people were very passionate about religion back then and when the one man said, “Women can’t have as many rights as a man, because Jesus Christ was a man.” She stated that Christ came from God and a woman (the virgin Mary). Since, like I said, religion was a big part of the community and society back then I’m sure it influenced many people greatly. This may have been more comprehensible after it was changed to the more proper version in later years. Editing it may have made it more understandable to the certain crowds and audiences. Also, Sojourner Truth’s was of putting it was just her way of speaking. Without proper education or anything like that, she learned her form of language from her peers. So maybe when they edited it, they thought that they were only doing truth a favor and serving her justice by “transforming” what she has previously said and making it more understandable to the audience.

Women deserve equal rights as men do, and Truth did a very good job of standing firm and strong on this point. She stood strong on her opinions, facts, and points. She used good facts and evidence and appealed to all of the things that the people would have wanted to hear if they were on the fence. The editor may have edited the text in such way to appeal to the current times audience and may have been looking back into history. Back in the time when this was written, it probably made more sense to the people of the south than it would have the edited way. It made the points and helped dictate how different people perceived the message in different ways.