Historian to Participant
The second time Dana goes to Maryland, she witnesses the brutal whipping of Alice's father lying on the ground nearby. She watches "the man's body [convulse]" (36) as he gets whipped, slowly having his resolve chipped away. It gets to the point where Dana is physically pained just from witnessing it. As she says, "My stomach heaved, and I had to force myself to stay where I was and keep quiet. Why didn't they stop!" (36). Before the scene is finished, Dana is holding back vomit. In this moment, we witness the blurring of the line between historian and participant in history. And while this scene by far isn't the most obvious example of participating in history (since the entire rest of the book is also about that), it is an important scene due to the switch between witnessing and being in the slave era. In this scene, Dana experiences feelings that she didn't expect from just watching the beating take place. Despite having "seen people bea...