The way of slavery was cruel and bad. Slavery gave good people away, it caused People To Do Bad Things. Slave owners gave horrific conditions. Throughout, Frederick Douglass narrative story express his true experiences, as they really happened. His arguments against slavery are embedded in the telling of what he really went through . Douglass was only able to see his mother only a few times before she passed away when he was a very young age. The rest of his family was either dead or was moved away from him. He had no way of ever coming eye to eye with them again. He was forced to see the whipping of his own Aunt Hester. Aunt Hester "was brought into the kitchen, she was stripped from her neck to her waist, leaving her neck shoulders …show more content…
Auld changed in to a bad person because of the bad effect slavery had on her. Slaves weren't considered as human and neither did they think they were. The slaves were mostly considered to be part of a owned property." Not only were slaves not considered to be human but they did not feel human either Douglass states that". " I trace my first glimmering conception At this moment, I viewed more quickly than ever the bad effects of slavery upon both slave and slave owner ." He relates that there were times that he was "broken in body, soul and spirit.". Douglass describes the bad conditions. --" There were no bed provided to the slaves, unless one blanket would be considered such Not only did slaves have to deal with being whipped, but they worked insane amount of time on the fields. At night, the slaves had to sleep on a cold hard floor, with no warmth to support them. In addition to all of the harsh conditions at night, slaves had barely enough food to survive. Today, Americans eat over 35 pounds of food a month, but slaves received less than one third of this amount of food. The treatment was inhumane, as the slaves did nothing wrong. Even criminals in America today, who have caused harm to others, receive much better …show more content…
Slave owners used Christianity as justification for what they did to the slaves . One would think that being a religious person would introduce better values, and would have helped to end the evil acts of slavery. But being a more religious person made a slave owner harsher and tougher it made them go harder on slaves for no reason. Douglass literally considered the worst of slave owners to be the more religious people.. Were I to be again reduced to the chains of slavery, next to that enslavement, Having a religious slave master was the worst thing that happened to me .For of all slave master that I have ever met, religious slave owners are the worst ones. I have ever found them the meanest and cruelest, the most cruel and scared , of all others." In order to help slaves get through some of the bad conditions that they went through .Families should have been provided for kids in slavery but Instead, slavery separated kids from their friends and families so the kid were on their own, even the little ones not only through childhood, but likely for their whole life. Douglass explained about this tragic situation through what he went through as a slave . The argument that "good people tend do bad things" has came throughout the world
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, depicts a vivid reality of the hardships endured by the African American culture in the period of slavery. One of the many things shown in Frederick's narrative is how slaves, in their own personal way, resisted their masters authority. Another is how slaves were able to create their own autonomous culture within the brutal system in which they were bound. There are many examples in the narrative where Frederick tries to show the resistance of the slaves. The resistors did not go unpunished though, they were punished to the severity of death. Fredrick tells of these instances with a startling sense of casualness, which seems rather odd when comprehending the content of them. He does this though, not out of desensitization, but to show that these were very commonplace things that happened all over the South at the time.
Frederick Douglass, an African American social reformer who escaped from slavery, in his autobiography “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself,” denotes the perilous life of a slave in the South. Through syntax, Douglass is able to persuade his readers to support the abolitionist movement as his writing transitions from shifting sentence lengths to parallel structure and finally to varying uses of punctuation. Douglass begins his memoir with a combination of long and short sentences that serve to effectively depict life his life as a slave. This depiction is significant because it illustrates the treatment of slaves in the south allows his audience to despise the horrors of slavery. In addition, this
Douglass’ explains his view of religion as “When I think that these precious souls are to-day shut up in the prison-house of slavery, my feelings overcome me, and I am almost ready to ask, “Does a righteous God govern the universe? And for what does he hold the thunders in his right hand, if not to smite the oppressor, and deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the spoiler? (p.48).” He wonders how a righteous God can rule the universe, and yet still allow cruel things like slavery to exist. One of the ways Douglass shows himself to be a Christian, is by quoting the Bible, “Dark and terrible as is this picture, I hold it to be s...
Frederick Douglass emphasizes the dehumanization aspect of slavery throughout his narrative. As is the general custom in slavery, Douglass is separated from his mother early in infancy and put under the care of his grandmother. He recalls having met his mother several times, but only during the night. She would make the trip from her farm twelve miles away just to spend a little time with her child. She dies when Douglass is about seven years old. He is withheld from seeing her in her illness, death, and burial. Having limited contact with her, the news of her death, at the time, is like a death of a stranger. Douglass also never really knew the identity of his father and conveys a feeling of emptiness and disgust when he writes, "the whisper that my master was my father, may or may not be true; and, true or false, it is of but little consequence to my purpose" (Douglass, 40). Douglass points out that many slave children have their masters as their father. In these times, frequently the master would take advantage of female slaves and the children born to the slave w...
In the well-written narrative The Life of Fredrick Douglass, the author, and former slave known as Fredrick Douglass, uses multiple examples of brutal whippings and severe punishments to describe the terrible conditions that African American slaves faced in the south. Douglass’s purpose for writing this narrative was to show the physical and emotional pain that slaves had to endure from their owners. According to Fredrick Douglass, “adopted slaveholders are the worst” and he proves his point with his anecdotes from when he was a slave; moreover, slave owners through marriage weren’t used to the rules of slaveholding so they acted tougher. He also proves that Christian slave owners weren’t always holier, they too showed no mercy towards their slaves and Douglass considered them religious hypocrites.
Frederick Douglass did a great job explaining the harsh conditions of being a slave. In his narrative he spoke of the cruel things he saw and underwent while being a slave. Also, in doing this he shows the readers how his location(south) and dismemberment was a big deal growing up as a slave. He starts us off with a little background knowledge about himself .From the very beginning of his novel he made it clear that he didn't know his age, and that he was separated from his mother.1 This was something slaveholders did you separate families, regardless of their social status. He then goes on to say that the only time he saw his mother was at night, after she walked miles to get to him.2 To brake the bond between them two, the separation was necessary between slaves. He also believed that his father might be his master because slaveholders often impregnate their female slaves. Even though he was the son of a white man, there was a lot of distaste the children take after the status of their mother and his case is a slave. Which effect was great for the master because it increased his number of slaves, and the more slaves one man owned the more money he brought in.
... “Prior to [Captain Auld’s] 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 the slaveholding cruelty” (Douglass 883). This means that slaveholders use Christianity as a tool to show that they are good at heart and are doing God’s work, but they use it as a divine right to brutally beat slaves. This is what Frederick wants other abolitionists to recognize, especially the abolitionist women.
Douglass does not understand what slavery really is while he's a young boy until the day he saw his aunt get whipped by his master. Douglass really starts to suffer and see what slavery is when he starts to work for Covey. When Douglass says to die rather than let himself be whipped again, he gains the strength that he will need for his
Narrating these stories informs readers not familiar with slavery a clear idea on how slaves lived and were treated. The novel brings a strong political message to our society. If Douglass explains to people what slavery was about, they would be influenced to make a change. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is the story of Frederick Douglass from the time he was born a slave to the time of his escape to freedom. Through years of physical abuse and assault, Douglass overcame these obstacles to become an advocate against
In relation to the novel, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass’s disobedience ultimately sparked his freedom. Being introduced to the “heart-rending shrieks” from his aunt at such a young age, slavery implanted a long-lasting effect on his life. Often times, when one experiences a painful memory in the manner such as watching a family member hit until they are covered with blood, sparks a fire to stand up for what is right in the back of their mind. Douglass carried those visions of his aunt along with him his whole life, as well as his own repulsive
After Frederick Douglass was forced to leave Baltimore. To be enslaved by cruel Mr. Thomas in St. Michaels. Master Thomas went to a religion camp. Frederick hoped he would come back a less cruel man. However he returned the exact opposite. “After his conversion he found religious sanction and support for his slave holding cruelty.” When he would whip or beat a slave. He would quote a scripture that reads, “He who kwoweth his masters will and doith it not, shall be beaten with many stripes.” In the article “Christianity as a Justification for Slavery.” It shares a good point on what slave holder’s
In sum, all of these key arguments exist in “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” because of the institution of slavery and its resulting lack of freedom that was used to defend it. This text’s arguments could all be gathered together under the common element of inequality and how it affected the practical, social, and even spiritual lives of the slaves.
The era of slavery should have been called the era of inhumanity. Slavery was inhumane, barbaric, and ultimately disgusting. In 1800 the population of the United States included 893,602 slaves, of which only 36,505 were in northern states (Phillips 18). Slaves were treated as if they were a piece of meat. The defined characteristics of slaves are as follows, " their labor or services are obtained through force; their physical beings are regarded as the property of another person, their master; they are entirely subject to their master's or owner's will" (Phillips 17). Slave life according to historians has never been and will never be classified as a so-called idyllic experience. There was little in the way of recreation and other forms of entertainment to pass the time. It must be remembered that, slaves had no time they could call their own. Rarely did slaves get any "free time" at all, but when they did it was spent recuperating from long sixteen-hour workdays. Most slaves were not well taken care of. Many slaves went for days without eating, and in turn this caused their work pace to slow. According to Collier, plantation slaves worked sixteen-hour days in the summer, and were only given three pounds of bacon or pork and roughly twelve quarts of cornmeal a week (26). Many slave owners or overseers would peruse the plantations and lash out at any given slave particularly because they simply weren't working hard enough.
In Frederick Douglass’ Narrative, Christianity is a prominent feature of both slave and slave-owners’ lives. However, Douglass highlights the discrepancies between the religions of these two groups, finding the Christianity of slave holders to be false, malicious and hypocritical. Though he makes clear he is not irreligious himself, Douglass condemns the insincere ideology of slave owning America.
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 physical burdens of slavery that he faced on a daily basis, it was the psychological effects that caused him the greatest amount of detriment during his twenty-year enslavement. In the same regard, Douglass is able to profess that it was not only the slaves who incurred the damaging effects of slavery, but also the slaveholders. Slavery, in essence, is a destructive force that collectively corrupts the minds of slaveholders and weakens slaves’ intellects.