“The Ice Palace,” portrays life in the age of depression, and discusses primary themes of societal prejudice and marriage. It does so in a format bright with imagery. Sunlight, warmth of the south, contrasts with the north’s cold winter, giving the reader a clue as to the name of the novel, the Ice Palace. Sally Carol Harper realizes that her friends disapprove of her being engaged to a northerner. Sally lives steeped in the wealth of the South. This work being fiction, and written for a largely white audience for pleasure reading, contrasts heavily with its nonfiction counterpart, My Bondage My Freedom, both in writing style and story.
The nonfictional biography describes life in post-antebellum America while emphasizing racism in the North and abolitionist efforts. In this work, the author does something interesting by personifying slavery, “Slavery can change a saint into a sinner, and an angel into a demon”. (Douglas) Simply put, the inhumanity of humans selling humans is traced back in history regarding decades prior and being sold in Africa. The institutionalized slavery plays a primary role in this story because the “institution” is more than just slavery, but also applies to the lack of humanity in society, namely, this institution. A solution to this conflict is given, and this is the idea that knowledge and working to further one’s situation in life is the answer to these issues.
The secondary themes in the two stories are opposites. In the nonfiction, brutal flogging, beating, and whipping is coupled with vivid descriptions of hunger and true poverty. This is done to add to the intense scenes of inhumanity. On an optimistic note, knowledge is portrayed as the remedy to violence and inhumanity in this establishment. One must cease to be ignorant and leave hatred behind. In the Ice Palace, however, a societal pressure is the main conflict in the story. The feelings of many well-to-do and upper class people of the divided nation in the 1800s are conveyed by Sally’s friends resenting her choice to marry a northern man. Further, “the ice was a ghost” (Fitzgerald) is a metaphor that shows the fact that Sally is in a negative frame of mind. She misses the warmth of the South and the other people she loves. This contributes to a feeling of sympathy and admiration for the protagonist. Adversely, the fact that Harry, Sally’s northern fiancée, is racist, as proven by his quote, “’They’ve lived so long down there with all the colored people that they’ve gotten lazy and shiftless…” (Fitzgerald) causes the modern audience to cringe.
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The former story, in comparison with the real story of struggle, seems a bit superficial compared to the hardship of a black man growing up in the same region as Miss Sally. He started living in his grandparents’ house; him and his relatives were slaves, yet he did not realize the harshness of this fact until he was forced to leave them when he was of age and work for the dreaded “master”. Frederick Douglas has a nightmarish time being owned by different masters who treated him horribly before finally running away to the North and buying his freedom. It took him years to get to this point. He did not settle down, but traveled, and became a disciple of William Lloyd Garrison, who fervently opposed slavery. Education is revealed to be the conflict dissolver, as Douglas made himself learned to defeat societal norms.
Another aspect is one of spirituality. The fiction does not mention God and seems to be geared toward a more agnostic audience, a fictional story which had little need to incorporate a spiritual conversation. The nonfiction however, relies on a religious point of view to gain insight regarding calling out to the divine. An example is used regarding the unfairness of slaves not being able to marry, “What is to be thought of a nation boasting of its liberty, boasting of its humanity, boasting of its Christianity, boasting of its love of justice and purity, and yet having within its borders three millions of persons denied by law the right of marriage?” (Douglas) The slaves were fervently wondering why their condition was the way it was. Conversely, the other story is simply a young girl missing her family and culture. Although the climax occurs when she is lost and frostbitten and demands to go home the very next day, which is no small trial compared to modern life, it is nothing compared to the reality of slavery.
The characters Sally and Fredrick, surprisingly, are very similar. Both ambitious and imaginative, but different genders and walks of life. This works on a superficial level, however. After Sally is almost frozen to death, she demands and screams at the top of her lungs to her fiancée Harry, ‘“Take me home”—her voice rose to a scream that sent a chill to Harry’s heart as he came racing down the next passage—”to-morrow!” she cried with delirious, unrestrained passion—”To-morrow! To-morrow! To-morrow!”’ (Fitzgerald) which indicates that she somewhat lost her strength in this escapade. Frederick, on the other hand, does not lose his composure at inopportune times. However, normal emotions are portrayed as reactions to his exposure to cruelty at a young age. “The tear down childhood’s cheek that flows, Is like the dew-drop on the rose— When next the summer breeze comes by, And waves the bush—the flower is dry.” (Douglas)
It seems that a large gap between fiction and nonfiction exists. One, in the reality of a biography. Two, in the themes geared toward one audience or another. The Fitzgerald and Douglas have two very different motives for writing these different works. Although they chronologically occurred at similar times, they have very different themes, imagery, and tones. Fitzgerald wrote his story after speaking with a woman from Sweden. It inspired him to write to story due to her mannerisms being so bleak. This is reflected in Sally’s acting differently after her ordeal in the ice palace. The motive behind Douglas’ authorship is far more compelling. He wrote his life story in the form of a book to show the reality that people of his race face, and his continuing to battle racism in the north. This sheds light onto a relevant political issue of the time regarding northern Americans hating blacks but advocating against slavery.
A question the reader might find themselves asking is how are these stories relevant today? How might they influence society as it stands? Slavery is done away with in the United States, yet racial prejudice and racism still exist and are alive and well. Does Sally represent a form of white privilege, combining trivial problems with one ordeal at the end being lost? Does Douglas’s life story completely rule out the possibility that racism could ever become extinct? The answer to these questions is subjective. However, nonfiction works tend to lean towards objectivity and fiction likewise to subjectivity. I think the answer lies somewhere in everyone’s heart and willingness to look inward, and the potential implications reading both these stories will have on his or herself.
