Perennial throughout all history, man’s adoration and abuse of power inevitably evokes his personal corruption. At creation, Adam and Eve succumbed to vices as they lusted for the power of wisdom. Similarly, in current civilization, men idolize money as it enhances their fame and influence on humanity. Ultimately, when a man’s ability surpasses any societal limitations, greed, lust, and pride tempt his morality which usually fails to persist. In his novel, the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Frederick Douglas reminisces on personal experiences as a slave while concurrently investigating the paradoxical nature of Southern slaveholders. He delves into the mystery of a white man’s ability to suppress …show more content…
Though not prohibiting slavery, it warns slaveholders to manage their lesser men with an upmost vigilance recalling that they themselves are similarly suppressed by an even higher being. Nevertheless, Christian slave holders are deemed to be most unusually cruel. They alter the bible’s teachings in order to support their own practices. “Religion of the South is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes,—a justifier of the most appalling barbarity,—a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds… [It is the] dark shelter under, which the foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of slaveholders find their strongest protection” (Douglas, 117). By conjuring the most abstruse interpretations of Christian teachings, they justify their actions thus allowing for their purposeful ignorance. During his bondage under Captain Auld, Frederick Douglas observes his master consoling “religious sanction for his cruelty” (Douglas, 98). When he relentlessly whips a lame young woman and then exhibits her lacerated nude body for countless hours, he justifies his bloody deed with the Scripture quote: “He that knoweth his master’s will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes” (Douglas, 99). This girl’s supposed disobedience, however, actually proves to be helplessness, as she is impaired with the inefficacy of her hands which were burnt in a fire. Captain Auld finds religious vindications promoting his punishment of the girl’s inabilities while,
The “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” is an autobiography in which Frederick Douglass reflects on his life as a slave in America. He writes this book as a free slave, in the North, while slavery was still running its course before the Civil War. Through his effective use of rhetorical strategies, Frederick Douglass argues against the institution of slavery by appealing to pathos and ethos, introducing multiple anecdotes, using satirical irony, and explaining the persuasive effects of slavery and reasoning behind keeping slaves uneducated.
Slave owners used Christianity as an excuse for the awful ways they treated their slaves. Christianity played a major role on the increase of brutality and violence that spirited the slave owners. The scriptures in the Bible were twisted in the eyes of slave owners to how they wanted to interpret them. Douglass had a powerful experience with one of his masters, Thomas Auld. Mr. Auld was not a religious person and treated the slaves very poorly. In August 1832, Auld attended a Methodist camp meeting and that marked the day when he became religious, and suddenly even more cruel. “Prior to his conversion, he relied upon his own depravity to shield and sustain him in his savage barbarity; but after his conversion, he found religious sanction and support for his slaveholding cruelty.” After becoming religious, Auld uses scripture to justify his cruelty. Douglass thought that with discovering religion and using it, Auld would become more polite as how Douglass viewed Christianity. Unfortunately that was not the case. Auld justifies that being affiliated with religion would not change a person for the better. Being a slave, Douglass found that slave owners found religious sanction for their cruelty. “He that knoweth his master's will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes.", was what a slave owner had said to justify why he beat
To start off, Douglass uses the rhetorical appeal, logos, to denounce the actions of the slave owners. Douglass describes the characteristics of a cruel overseer, Mr. Severe. “He died very soon after… and he died as he lived, uttering… bitter curses and horrid oaths” (Douglass, 19). The contrast in the two words “died” and “lived” also relates to logic, or rather the lack of logic, because his horrible actions caused him to die a horrible death. It shows that slaveholders are hard-headed on their attitudes on slavery, which uncovers the lack of compassion displayed by the slave owners. To build on, the word “oath” signifies having Christian values. Typically, Christians take oaths to never lie and to speak the truth, yet slave owners allow themselves to lie to their own beliefs when they treat slaves as if they were not human. Slave owners justify the way they act, by dehumanizing slaves and treating them as animals or property. Furthermore, Mrs. Auld, the wife of a slave owner, demonstrates how slavery rots the soul of slave owners. She starts out teaching young Douglass how to read and write and then becomes just like all the other corrupted slave owners. “The tender heart became stone, and the lamb-like disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness” (Douglass, 34). In the quote, Douglass uses an antithesis varying in words such as, “tender” and “stone”. Contrasting words appeal to logos, because this evidence helps justify the argument that slavery transforms slave owners, in this case, Mrs. Auld. He also uses animals “lamb” and “tiger” to emphasize the similarities of animals and slaves at this time. It can also relate to
The brutality that slaves endured form their masters and from the institution of slavery caused slaves to be denied their god given rights. In the "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass," Douglass has the ability to show the psychological battle between the white slave holders and their black slaves, which is shown by Douglass' own intellectual struggles against his white slave holders. I will focus my attention on how education allowed Douglass to understand how slavery was wrong, and how the Americans saw the blacks as not equal, and only suitable for slave work. I will also contrast how Douglass' view was very similar to that of the women in antebellum America, and the role that Christianity played in his life as a slave and then
This leads to a major issue within the slave community. Slaves possess little knowledge of life outside the plantation or house in which they are working at. This means they have no idea how humans are supposed to be treated, and rather that a “god” would never allow for another to be beaten in such severity. This is an advantage that the slave owners held over the actual slaves. If the slaves were to gain an understanding of the world around them, the “religious” quotes recited by slave owners would quickly lose their worth and soon mean nothing as well as hold no influence over the slaves. Frederick Douglas was fortunate enough to understand this, and even addressed the issue in his life story, “What I have said respecting and against religion, I mean strictly to apply to the slaveholding religion of this land, and with no possible reference to Christianity proper; for, between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference- so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked(71).” Douglas understands that the Christianity practiced by the slave owners was far different from the Christianity intended by Jesus Christ. As Douglas referred to it, the “Slaveholding religion” was prominent throughout the slavery era, not only was this damaging for the slaves,
Many people believe that Christians played a great role in abolishing slavery. However, Douglass’ ideas about religion and its connection to slavery shine a light on the dark side of Christianity. Douglass’ account of his own life is a very eloquent first hand retelling of the suffering and cruelty that many slaves were going through. His account gives a detail of the ills that were committed against the slaves. The atrocities committed by the various different masters varied in intensity depending on the masters’ individual personality (Glancy 42). This first hand narrative gives us a glimpse in to the connection between religion (Christianity) and slavery.
Therefore, he appears quite compelling when he attempts to bring out the connection between religion and slavery. Looking at what Douglass went through as a slave, it is unfortunate that his act of reading the Bible was considered a violation of the law. At one point, Douglass narrated that his master’s wife offered Douglass with help to read and write. However, due to “advice” given by her husband and the connection between the Bible and slavery, Douglass’s master’s wife turned against him and was now cruel and bitter towards him.
In many occassions people have used the Bible as a support for slavery. Slavery refers to individuals that are owned by others, whom have full control of their excistance. As time passed by, slavery developed and was the cause of many conflicts. In the movie "Twelve Years of Slave" we can see how slavery builds the inferno everyone burns. In an analysis of the movie for Commmonweal magazine, Richard Alleva said," To suggest that slave owners suffered as much as slaves would be obscene." In the other hand, Frederick Douglass wrote, "Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me." Douglass knows what it is to be a slave, and that is the reason why his statement can never be wrong. In his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, he proves that there is nothing inferior about slaves, and that is why slavery is just an injustice for the world since it ruins its people. He knows the damage is for both, slaves and slave owners.
How did slavery continue to exist despite its inhumane practices? Many of these owners employed the ideas of dehumanizing slaves and religion in order to perpetuate their actions. Dehumanization demoted the societal status of slaves, therefore deeming blacks inferior to their white counterparts. Moreover, although directly opposing religious principles of kindness and avoidance of sin, plantation owners used Christianity as a mechanism to mask their inhumanity and encourage their cruelty toward slaves. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass develops themes of dehumanization and religion, which helps readers understand the techniques slave owners utilized to alleviate their guilt, condone malice toward slaves, and preserve supremacy over colored people in Southern society.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, brings to light many of the social injustices that colored men, women, and children all were forced to endure throughout the nineteenth century under Southern slavery laws. Douglass's life-story is presented in a way that creates a compelling argument against the justification of slavery. His argument is reinforced though a variety of anecdotes, many of which detailed strikingly bloody, horrific scenes and inhumane cruelty on the part of the slaveholders. Yet, while Douglas’s narrative describes in vivid detail his experiences of life as a slave, what Douglass intends for his readers to grasp after reading his narrative is something much more profound. Aside from all the
In the play Macbeth by William Shakespeare, Lady Macbeth is an important character who provides different details of the play. She is a heartless killer who murdered the king at the beginning of the play but grows to be a different character by the end. She and her husband lived peacefully together at first, but it fell apart after the killing of the king. It’s a story of love, murder, and the fall of a relationship. In the play, Lady Macbeth is influenced by the emotions of greed, guilt, and demand.
Douglass shows that people who claimed to be moral Christians were torturers of humans. He presents the irony of this situation in the book. "His (the master's) house was the preachers' home. They (the preachers) used to take great pleasure in coming there to put up; for while he starved us, he stuffed them."(40-41) Douglass is presenting his audience with the two faces of the slave holder's version of Christianity; the selfish greed hidden behind piousness. In addition to this Douglass also makes sarcastic descriptions of people and places, describing how un-Christian they were by calling them Christian. "(I)t is almost an unpardonable offense to teach slaves to read in this Christian county."(32)
Douglass’s narrative is a courageous work, as it confronts the slavery institution, and the misuse of Christianity by the slave owners
Gabrielle Chanel, other wise known as famous fashion designer Coco Chanel, was born on August 19, 1883 in Saumur, France (biography.com). The baby girl was born to parents Albert Chanel and Jeanne Devolle, a young unwed couple that lived in great poverty. Her parents had seven children giving them three daughters Gabrielle Chanel, Antoinette Chanel, Julia Chanel, and four sons Lucien Chanel, Augustin Chanel, Pierre Chanel, and Alphonse Chanel. Jeanne Devolle died due to tuberculosis when her children were very young age leaving her children to be raised alone by their father who worked as a peddler. (Time) Her father, unable to successfully care for his children, made the tough decision to release the children from his care. The boys of the house were sent to a farm where they spent their childhood as laborers. The girls, including Coco Chanel, were all sent to an orphanage where they would be raised by Catholic nuns. The nuns raised her in a extremely strict manner but failed to ever break her tough demeanor. The nuns that raised Coco Chanel from late childhood wanted to teach her a skill she could use throughout her life: sewing. In fact, every source of education Chanel had came from what she was taught in her years at the orphanage. Chanel would take the skills she learned, combine them with the hardships she faced, and grow a fashion empire bigger than she could’ve ever dreamed of.
However, from a different perspective Social Conflict Approach, Karl Max defined the Social Conflict Approach as a framework for building theory that sees society as an arena of inequality that generates conflict and changes. Conflict theory usually emphasizes on negative, conflicted and ever-changing nature of society. Unlike functionalists who defended the status quo, avoid social change and believe people works together to effect social order, conflict theories challenge the status quo, encourage social change and believe rich and powerful people force social order on the weak and poor. Now the problem is how far do social conflict theories relate to the educational system? As illustrated by Marxist theorists Althusser, education socially