'Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglas'

For over 2,000 years, slavery has been conducted in various parts of the world. From year 1500 to year 1900, Europeans stole individuals from West Africa, West Central Africa, and Southeast Africa and shipped them to the different parts of the Atlantic. This process dehumanized them of their identity. Europeans stole husbands, wives, merchants, blacksmiths, farmers, and even children. They removed them from their homelands and gave them new names: slaves. European slaveholders never thought to take ownership of their actions by killing humans with brutality and degradation. Slave trade was considered popular in England and soon after more countries began the process of taking slaves to newly claimed territories. These countries include

Picture this going through life without the ability to read or write. Without these abilities, it is impossible for a person to be a functioning member of society. In addition, imagine that someone is purposely limiting your knowledge to keep a leash on your independence. Not only is an American slave raised without skills in literacy, he cannot be taught to read unless someone breaks the law. In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, the reader is given a detailed explanation of why slave masters keep their slaves ignorant and the effects such a strategy has on the slaves’ lives. In his autobiography, Douglass describes how the knowledge he obtains has substantial positive and negative effects on his psyche. He is given renewed passion and hope for freedom while struggling with the burden of enlightenment of his situation. Ultimately, however, education shapes his fate, and he achieves freedom and prominence as an advocate for abolition.

The slaveholders take away certain necessities, such as a childhood, from the slaves. They use severe punishment to make the slaves obey their command. One major form of punishment was using cow skin as a whip until the slave’s backs were red and disfigured. In Frederick Douglas’s, “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas an American Slave,” he recalls his very first instance of seeing one of his Aunt’s getting beaten and striped down. Douglas states, “had he been a man of pure morals himself, he might have been thought interested in protecting the innocence of my aunt; but those who knew him will not suspect him of any virtue” (102-103). The “he” that is being referred to in Douglas’s statement was his recent slaveholder, Captain Anthony. Slaveholders and Whites in general, felt as if the blacks were an inferior race. They assumed themselves as the dominant race and carried on with dehumanizing acts. The slaveholders not only dehumanized themselves from treating the slaves like animals, but the slaves were also dehumanized. Douglas uses the scene where he witnessed Captain Anthony whipping his Aunt as the horror of slavery. Slavery was not only a physical control but also a figure of mental control. They were active participants in such brutal conditions that they feared for their own safety. Slaves were psychologically damaged as much as the physical aspect of slavery, which was lash

He notes that, the slavery institution made them forget about their origin, and anything else that entails their past, and even when they were born. The slaves forgot everything about their families, and none knew about their family because, they were torn from them without any warning. Douglass explains how they went without food, clothing and even sleep because their masters were cruel to them. American slavery took advantage of black laborers as they were beaten mercilessly without committing any offense. They were not treated as human beings, but as property that could be manipulated in any way. The slavery institution was harsh for the Africans especially women who were regularly raped, and forced to bear their masters children and if they declined, they were maimed or killed.

Greed is the undertone upon which Douglass states that slavery “corrupted souls” and “turned good people into bad people.” The institution of slavery was based on the ultimate control and power over a human to whom he is stripped of all of his identity and becomes sub-human. Consequently, the institution forces slave holders had to buy into this concept in order to justify any and all cruelty toward slaves. Douglas states “Slave holders resort to all kinds of cruelty” and later describes various ways of torture and punishment “all are in requisition to keep the slave in his condition as a slave in the United States” (Douglass 272). Slave holders showed no mercy when reprimanding slaves. The brutality and cruelty of these punishments were more of a statement of power and control and often times the punishment was worse than the offense.

Slavery as a Cruel Institution Cruelty can be defined as an inhumane action done to an individual or group of people that causes either physical or mental harm. Slavery, at its very core, was a cruel and inhumane institution. From the idea behind it to the way that it was enforced, it degraded the lives of human beings and forbade the basic liberties that every man deserves under the Constitution of the United States. Three major areas where cruelty was especially prevalent were in the slaves working conditions, living conditions, and loss of fundamental freedoms. Working conditions for slaves were about as bad as can possibly be imagined. Slaves worked from dawn till dusk and sometimes even longer. Solomon Northrup describes his

knowledge would lead slaves to question the right of whites to keep slaves. Lastly, by keeping

Perhaps one of the strongest elements of slavery is honor. Honor has had a wide range of impact in history, whether it was shaping major dynasties and hierarchies, deciding an individuals’ role in society, or family ties and marriages. This sense of worth, high esteem, or virtue was also manipulated by slave masters in order to control their slaves. “The slave could have no honor because of the origin of his status, the indignity and all-pervasiveness of his indebtedness, his absence of any independent social existence, but most of all because he was without power except through another” (p 6). This element is not just a physical force, such as coercive power, which one can heal and

In Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Mr. Douglass gives many examples of cruelty towards slaves as he shows many reasons that could have been used to abolish slavery. Throughout the well-written narrative, Douglass uses examples from the severe whippings that took place constantly to a form of brainwashing by the slaveholders over the slaves describing the terrible conditions that the slaves were faced with in the south in the first half of the 1800’s. The purpose of this narrative was most likely to give others not affiliated with slaves an explicit view of what actually happened to the slaves physically, mentally, and emotionally to show the explicit importance of knowledge to the liberation

Starting from a slave’s birth, this cruel process leads to a continuous cycle of abuse, neglect, and inhumane treatment. To some extent, slave holders succeed because they keep most slaves so concerned with survival that they have no time or energy to consider freedom. This is particularly true for plantation slaves where the conditions of slave life are the most difficult and challenging. However, slave holders fail to realize the damage they inadvertently inflict on themselves by upholding slavery and enforcing these austere laws and attitudes.

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.

During the enslavement of Fredrick Douglas, he began to educate himself in the field of language and writing. Quickly this became a burden as well as a blessing, as Fredrick had to duck and hide at every turn to ensure that no one who could be a threat to his being found out that he possessed the ability to read. As Fredrick slowly grows with each piece of new material he can acquire, it becomes more evident that Fredrick has also consecutively began to become depressed. Though gifted with the ability to read and even write, later on his life, he now possessed enough knowledge to understand the severity of his situation. He was a man trapped with no way to escape. This began to wear on Fredrick and pushed him into the dark depths of

Frederick Douglas, which is the famous leader in American slavery movement, and also he was the first slave that escaped from the south part of America, then he decided to write down his selves’ legend. In 1845, he published his first autobiography Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglas. In this book, he written down the specific detail about his life of being a slave, and introduced his life experience in this book. He was a half-blood which his father was a white man mother was a black slave. As the same as we are watched the movie Twelfth year’s a slave, the baron or the master could have relationship with random slaves if he wants, because in the land he is the only right, even though god is existent. Because of his identity bring him a lot of trouble and lucky. The trouble is he could not have escaped the identity that his mother gave him, and could not get normally love from

Like many others demoralized cultures during the Atlantic Slave trade period, Africans fell victim to the sixteenth century discovery of Columbus' so called "New World." Europeans used the Atlantic Slave Trade to capitalize on Columbus' so called "Discovery." For more than three centuries, the regions of Africa were in a state of destabilization. More than thirty million Africans were taken out of Africa and put in the Americas and surrounding countries.

treated them harshly. The masters’ perception of blacks was that they lacked self-discipline and morality. They justified slavery by claiming that they were training the slaves to master self discipline through work and also train them in the precepts of God. Not all masters were harsh and cruel. Some treated their slaves with kindness and subsequently were well loved. However, it still emerges that a majority of even the kindest masters still did not attach much humane value to their slaves. This has been exemplified in that despite