This passage on Mary Prince was dreadful to read. The awful treatment of slaves as if they weren’t humans depicts a scenario almost impossible to comprehend. Mary’s latter owners were without question terrible individuals who treated their slaves with nothing but hatred. She was sold as livestock – “surrounded by strange men, who examined and handled her in the same manner a butcher would handle a calf”, and not treated any better after being bought. Her owners Captain I and Mr. D didn’t hide the fact that Mary and the others were simply a piece of property to them, nothing more than a means to an end, with the goal of increasing their personal wealth. The part that was surprising to me was her first owner, Miss Betsey. It may seem that Miss Betsey had affection and compassion towards Mary but still saw her as nothing more than an object like the other owners. She continuously referred to Mary as “mine” or “my slave”, which made me feel like none of the owners, not even Betsey, saw Mary as a human being equivalent to them. She may have treasured the object more than the other owners – but to her Mary was still and object.