The Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass

Towards the end of chapter ten in The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Douglas describes how slave owners would make slaves’ holidays miserable. Slave owners did this to manipulate the slaves into believing that they are better off in slavery. They would entice slaves to get drunk by placing bets on who could drink the most. When a slave had had enough to drink, he would then ask for something else, but unknowingly receive more alcohol. As a result, slaves would prefer to work in the fields instead of having holidays. This passage illustrates how African Americans remained content in their shackles of slavery for 245 years in America.

Another example of slave master’s methods to dehumanize slaves were the living conditions provided to slaves. Along with the lashings and severe punishment to which slaves were often subjected, they were also kept half-starved. As Douglass writes, “They [Henrietta and Mary] seldom knew what it was to eat a full meal.” Douglass adds, “I have seen Mary contending with the pigs for the offal thrown into the street.” (pp. 411-412) This reveals how slave masters would not feed slaves adequate portions of food, which led to many slaves being extremely thin and malnourished. Knowledge of such despicable acts happening to one's family can only inspire feelings of despise, disgust and hatred. Douglass, however, used this as fuel to inspire his freedom.

In Frederick Douglass 's first autobiography, "Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass”, he provides a graphic portrayal of his childhood and disturbing experiences as a slave as well as his eventual escape to freedom. Douglass went through physical abuse, starvation, and mental fatigue during his youth, yet through unimaginable circumstances he was able to overcome everything and become a writer, newspaper editor, and most of all one of the most influential abolitionist. In telling his story, Douglass paints a realistic picture of slavery. Douglass 's narrative spells out the slaveholders ' tactics in simple terms while highlighting the moral inefficiencies and the damaging effects of slavery on both the slave and the slaveholder

The power that they have over their slaves has a damaging effect on their moral health because they are careless. Douglass describes adultery and rape as typical behavior patterns of slaveholders which damage their families. Sophia Auld is Douglass's main illustration of the corruption of slave owners. The power of slaveholding changes Sophia from a nice woman to a demon. She went from a kind, caring and loving person into a typical mean slave master. She was no longer able to teach Douglass how to read because her husband disapproved it. Slaveholders gain and keep power over blacks from their birth onward by keeping them ignorant of basic facts about themselves. For example slaves didn't know their birth date or who their parents were. They didn't want slaves to have a natural sense of identity. Slave children were not allowed to learn to read or write because this would lead slaves to question their rights.

Douglass argues that slavery corrupted slaveholders, debunking what the Northerners thought, that slave holders didn’t change. “That cheerful eye, under the influence of slavery, soon became red with rage.” (Excerpt 3 Paragraph 3) Douglass had lived with a kind woman who

Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, more commonly known as Frederick Douglass, was born around 1818 in Talbot County, Maryland (Hagler). Douglass was one of the most influential human rights leaders and one of the most renowned abolitionists. By learning to read and write around the age of 10, Douglass was able to develop a greater understanding of the world that didn’t revolve around slavery, along with the desire to become a free man and civil rights activist (Hagler). Douglass is now well known for his famous autobiography, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, in which he recalls his many experiences in slavery and the ways he dealt with the daily suffering. In his autobiographical narrative, The Narrative of the Life

The autobiography commences with the narrator explaining his place of birth: Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough, Talbot County, Maryland. One of his first inner struggles with which Douglass carried along throughout his life was the fact that had no knowledge of his birthday. The best estimate had been roughly 1818. Furthermore, he neither knew his father’s identity nor saw his mother as often as he would wish. Although he was separated from his mother at a tender age, Douglass narrates how she would sometimes sneak from a nearby plantation at night to sleep with him. His mother, Harriet Bailey, soon died but due to the lack of connection, her death did not have an emotional impact on him. On the other hand, it was widely speculated that his father was a white man and his captain’s first helper.

The most electrifying moments in Douglass’s narrative was seen when Douglass decides to fight Mr. Covey back. Douglass gets the courage to fight Mr. Covey because he had the magical root in his hand. In the Narrative, there are many instances where violence is being depicted but in most scenarios it is seen when the slave owners discipline the slave. The roles were never reversed until this moment. After this fight, Douglass longed to be free more than ever. Though this act of violence is not what Douglass wanted, it did help him stay motivated. This act of violence can be seen as an act of resistance against slavery.

For Douglass, the most memorable and emotion-provoking incident was the treatment of his grandmother. When she became too old to work, she, after a lifetime of faithful service to the family, was left helpless and alone in a shack in the woods to fend for herself. “They took her to the woods, built her a little hut, put up a little mud-chimney, and then made her welcome to the privilege of supporting herself in perfect loneliness; thus virtually turning her out to die!” (Douglass 51) Throughout his narrative, Douglass applied he rhetorical strategy of Pathos repeatedly and to great effect to promote and validate his view that slavery is morally wrong.

Frederick Douglass was born as a slave early in 1818, in Talbot County, Maryland, and was sent to Baltimore when he was about ten, to live with the Aulds and help take care of their son, Thomas. While he was in Baltimore, his mistress, Mrs. Auld, began to teach him the ABC’s, and how to spell simple words. Her husband found out what was going on,

Throughout his life Douglass experienced the terrors of slavery. As an adult, slavery only got worse for Douglass. “My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me” (Douglass, Chapter 10). Douglass explains how slavery crushed his human spirit. This was due to constant punishment and labor given to him by his master, Edward Covey.

Frederick Douglass gave countless examples of the effect that slavery had on the slaves, as well as on the masters. One specific example of how slavery has an effect on the masters is Sophia Auld. Sophia had never owned a slave before Frederick . Douglass described Sophia as “a woman with the kindest heart and finest feelings.” Before owning a slave, she was the nicest person he had ever come across. She began to teach him the alphabet and how to read. Eventually, Mr. Auld found out and forbade her to teach him.

What the average person does not know about slavery is all of the inhumane behavior that was tolerated. To describe these acts as cruel would be an understatement, Douglass does not hold back on the tragedies he witnessed and he does not hold back on sharing them with the world. For so many years slave owners comforted themselves in the thought of the romantic image of slavery, claiming it was God’s will to let these people suffer, claiming that it was not an extreme environment. The only

Douglass gives detailed anecdotes of his and others experience with the institution of slavery to reveal the hidden horrors. He includes personal accounts he received while under the control of multiple different masters. He analyzes the story of his wife’s cousin’s death to provide a symbol of outrage due to the unfairness of the murderer’s freedom. He states, “The offence for which this girl was thus murdered was this: She had been set that night to mind Mrs. Hicks’s baby, and during the night she fell asleep, and the baby cried.” This anecdote, among many others, is helpful in persuading the reader to understand the severity of rule slaveholders hold above their slaves. This strategy displays the idea that slaves were seen as property and could be discarded easily.

In Douglass’ narrative, one of the morally questionable things he mentioned was how slavery had poisoned a person’s moral compass, depicted in Sophia Auld’s transformation. At the beginning of the meeting he briefly described her eyes as warm and undiscriminating. Having owned no slaves before, he described his mistress as a sincere and kind woman; all of this changed when Capt. Auld ordered Sophia to stop teaching Douglass how to read as “Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world” (32). Upon hearing this, Sophia consequently drowned in the power of authority, while at the same time Douglass had a revelation to a key point towards his freedom. Slaves were made to believe that this is their destiny and their ethical obligation to the white, and that the refusal to teach slaves and the extended holidays were ploys to keep the slaves from thinking about any uprising against the masters (58). In this strategic point, Douglass argued that the state of mental health digress for both the slaves who are left in the dark: illiterate and unable to fend for themselves so they wouldn’t catch on to their corrupt and unnatural predicament, and for the masters; whose power has blinded and force them to become malicious and aggressive, and made them become the person they are not to conform to society’s slave-holding