My Bondage and My Freedom was written by a man who born into and grew up in slavery who managed to escape its horrors and go on to live his life helping others. After escaping slavery, Frederick Douglass risked his freedom and his life to shed light on the abomination that was slavery and to fight for the freedom of others still enslaved. Frederick was hesitant to write his story at first but at the urging of a friend and with the hopes that his story would be a tool to help as many people as possible. He also chose to write his autobiography himself to help dispel the belief that slaves were “naturally inferior”, “utterly stupid”, “and do not apprehend their rights” (1) and that by writing his own story he could prove that the people held …show more content…
His intended audience was the country he loved, the people he hoped to help, and I believe that his hope was his story would touch future generations. In his book, Mr. Douglass addresses one of the most difficult topics of slavery and that is how it fit within the Christianity of his day. He pointed out the hypocrisy of the Southern preachers that “Instead of preaching the gospel against this tyranny, rebuke, and wrong, ministers of religion have sought, by all and every means, to throw into the background whatever in the bible could be construed into opposition to slavery, and to bring forward that which they could torture into its support.” (3) He was even chastised by other Christians suggesting that he was “injuring the cause of Christ” or “undermining religion.” (3) As a Christian man himself he was able to see the differences between the God of the bible and the people of the religion and I admire his ability to stand for what he believed and that he was brave enough to defend his God against the people that were twisting the bible for their own gain. “It is because I love this religion that I hate slaveholding… It is because I regard one as good, and …show more content…
Douglass describes in his book mirror the attitudes found in the PBS documentary “Slavery by Another Name”. The attitudes of those that owned slaves or held the opinion that slaves were an inferior people didn’t change with the emancipation of the slaves. The people of the South found other ways to enslave the African American community but this time by manipulating the new laws that were put in place. The southern property owners found other ways to force African Americans to work for them. The 13th Amendment states “Neither slavery or individual servitude, except as a punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States” so they found a way to twist the laws to force their former slaves into prison and back into bondage. They dramatically increased the penalties for small crimes (5 years in prison for stealing a $1 pig), would accuse African Americans of loitering and if they didn’t have proof of employment they were sent to jail. The southern property owners and the Justice of the Peace created a system that falsely imprisoned African Americans and as a result 90% of the prisoners were now black. The Southern states already had a policy of renting out prisoners by the month to industries and now that policy was being used to force the African Americans into bondage. “There are many important implications and long-term consequences for the convict leasing. Not only is it so oppressive,
At first glance, the book “my bondage and my freedom by Frederick Douglass appeared to be extremely dull and frustrating to read. After rereading the book for a second time and paying closer attention to the little details I have realized this is one of the most impressive autobiographies I have read recently. This book possesses one of the most touching stories that I have ever read, and what astonishes me the most about the whole subject is that it's a true story of Douglass' life. “ Douglass does a masterful job of using his own experience to expose the injustice of slavery to the world. As the protagonist he is able to keep the reader interested in himself, and tell the true story of his life. As a narrator he is able to link those experiences to the wider experiences of the nation and all society, exposing the corrupting nature of slavery to the entire nation.”[1] Although this book contributes a great amount of information on the subject of slavery and it is an extremely valuable book, its strengths are overpowered by its flaws. The book is loaded with unnecessary details, flowery metaphors and intense introductory information but this is what makes “My Bondage and My Freedom” unique.
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
The ideologies morphed into a different type of racism that is still connected to that from the 18th and 19th centuries, which is set up into the contemporary carceral state and prison-industrial complex in the terms of black criminality, black inferiority, domination of black people, and white supremacy. In Angela Davis’s lectures on liberation, she states the conditions of freedom include: physical or violent resistance, resistance of the mind, and recognition of alienation (Narrative of Frederick Douglass, p. 58, 64). In order to maintain the institution of slavery, “black people were forced to live in conditions not fit for animals,” in which “white slave-owners were determined to mould black people into the image of the subhuman being which they had contrived in order to justify their actions” (50 - 51). The slaves were under the condition of alienation, reducing them to “the status of property; This was how the save was defined: something to be owned” (53). This produces the idea that his existence is subjected down to property, capital, and money. Under the conditions of slavery, they were stripped of their rights, treated repressively, forced into free labor, and treated as an object. The abolishment of slavery, enacted by the 13th amendment, was supposed to rid such treatment, yet the prison-industrial complex still holds onto that legacy; as Davis puts it, it is “reincarnated through new institutions, new practices, and new ideologies” (The Meaning of Freedom, 140). The prison system sustains sediments of slavery as it deals with the ownership over the prisoner, controlling their every move. Prisoners are “not able to participate in the political arena or in civil life,” stripping their right to vote and depriving them of human rights (140). Prisoners are forced into free labor: fighting fires, building materials and supplies for
The Life of Fredrick Douglass shows how slavery could of not only affected the slaves but the owners as well. Thomas Auld was overall a cowardly owner and quite tough compared to other slaveholders. Douglass believed that since Auld obtained slave owning from marriage, it made him more of an unpleasant master because he wasn’t used to being around slavery and having so much power. Fredrick Douglass also was convinced that religious slaveholders were false Christians because they became more self-righteous and thought that God gave them the power to hold slaves. By telling stories to the reader, Douglass hoped to bring awareness to the harsh subject of slavery and show how the slaves kept hope during these miserable times.
Since the point of view is first person, the reader is able to be a part of the Douglass’ struggles with his new freedom. With diction, detail, and point of view, the reader is able to get a rare glimpse into the past of Fredrick Douglass. Fredrick Douglass’ diction is powerful as he describes his life as a slave and his new freedom. Fredrick Douglass calls being enslaved an act of “wretchedness,” yet he was able to remain “firm” and eventually leave the “chains” of slavery. Fredrick Douglass expresses that being enslaved is a wretched act and that no man should ever deserve such treatment.
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave details the progression of a slave to a man, and thus, the formation of his identity. The narrative functions as a persuasive essay, written in the hopes that it would successfully lead to “hastening the glad day of deliverance to the millions of [his] brethren in bonds” (Douglass 331). As an institution, slavery endeavored to reduce the men, women, and children “in bonds” to a state less than human. The slave identity, according to the institution of slavery, was not to be that of a rational, self forming, equal human being, but rather, a human animal whose purpose is to work and obey the whims of their “master.” For these reasons, Douglass articulates a distinction between the terms ‘man’ and ‘slaves’ under the institution of slavery. In his narrative, Douglass describes the situations and conditions that portray the differences between the two terms. Douglass also depicts the progression he makes from internalizing the slaveholder viewpoints about what his identity should be to creating an identity of his own making. Thus, Douglass’ narrative depicts not simply a search for freedom, but also a search for himself through the abandonment of the slave/animal identity forced upon him by the institution of slavery.
As both the narrator and author of “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, Written by Himself” Frederick Douglass writes about his transition from a slave to a well educated and empowered colored young man. As a skilled and spirited man, he served as both an orator and writer for the abolitionist movement, which was a movement to the abolishment of slavery. At the time of his narrative’s publication, Douglass’s sole goal of his writings was to essentially prove to those in disbelief that an articulate and intelligent man, such as himself, could have,in fact, been enslaved at one point in time. While, Douglass’ narrative was and arguably still is very influential, there are some controversial aspects of of this piece, of which Deborah McDowell mentions in her criticism.
Douglass moves to attack the Christian beliefs of the American people, showing the great discrepancies between the ideals held in the Christian faith and the ideals held by slaveowners. Christians avoidance of abolishing slavery, yet worshipping a loving and peaceful God, may be the worse crime of them all. Douglass explains the hypocrisy of the American people by choosing to continue slavery while claiming the benevolent principles embedded in the Bible. At the moment he gives this speech, “they are thanking God for the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty, yet they are utterly silent in respect to a law which robs religion of its chief significance” (Douglass 12). The American people acknowledge and thank God for their freedoms, yet purposefully
In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, a slave narrative published in 1845, Frederick Douglass divulged his past as a slave and presented a multifaceted argument against slavery in the United States. Douglass built his argument with endless anecdotes and colorful figurative language. He attempted to familiarize the naïve Northerners with the hardships of slavery and negate any misconstrued ideas that would prolong slavery’s existence in American homes. Particularly in chapter seven, Douglass both narrated his personal experience of learning to write and identified the benefits and consequences of being an educated slave.
In his narrative, Frederick Douglass shows how Christianity was used as a major justification for slavery and for the actions of slave masters, but he also shows how the religion provided hope for slaves themselves. In an appendix added at the end of the narrative, he draws a distinction between “the Christianity of this land” and “the Christianity of Christ,” saying that there is the “widest possible difference” between them. As he puts it, “I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.” In other words, Douglass thinks that Christianity has been corrupted in America, where people hypocritically use it to justify their injustices.
Frederick Douglass, the author of the book “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, said “I saw more clearly than ever the brutalizing effects of slavery upon both slave and slaveholder” (Douglass, p.71). Modern people can fairly and easily understand the negative effects of slavery upon slave. People have the idea of slaves that they are not allow to learn which makes them unable to read and write and also they don’t have enough time to take a rest and recover their injuries. However, the negative effects upon slaveholder are less obvious to modern people. People usually think about the positive effects of slavery upon slaveholder, such as getting inexpensive labor. In the book “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, Douglass also shows modern readers some brutalizing impact upon the owner of the slaves. He talks about Thomas Auld and Edward Covey who are his masters and also talks about Sophia Auld who is his mistress. We will talk about those three characters in the book which will help us to find out if there were the negative influences upon the owner of the slaves or not. Also, we will talk about the power that the slaveholders got from controlling their slaves and the fear that the slaveholders maybe had to understand how they were changed.
Douglass makes the distinction between the true and false forms of Christianity clear in the Appendix of his Narrative. He first characterizes the Christianity of Christ, practiced by himself, his fellow slaves, and non-slave owners in general, as genuine and peaceable. This sort of ideology is true to what Douglass interprets as the actual teachings of the Bible, and adherents are humble, kind, impartial, and nondiscriminatory. Douglass then distinguishes this proper ideology from the “corrupt, slave-holding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial, and hypocritical Christianity of this land” (430). Douglass believes that slavery and Christianity are opposing forces. The teachings of C...
Douglass's narrative is, on one surface, intended to show the barbarity and injustice of slavery. However, the underlying argument is that freedom is not simply attained through a physical escape from forced labor, but through a mental liberation from the attitude created by Southern slavery. The slaves of the South were psychologically oppressed by the slaveholders' disrespect for a slave’s family and for their education, as well as by the slaves' acceptance of their own subordination. Additionally, the slaveholders were trapped by a mentality that allowed them to justify behavior towards human beings that would normally not be acceptable. In this manner, both slaveholder and slave are corrupted by slavery.
His main argument in the speech is that it 's unjust and hypocritical for a country to celebrate its freedom while it still has slaves. Now that in itself is a morally viable argument, and it has never been more relevant than today in our racially hate fueled world where every situation is turned into a hate crime. However, back in those days majority of slaves were sold into slavery by their own people. Most slaves were sold by rival tribes as prisoners of war, or trouble makers of the tribe, thus giving us the “bottom of the barrel” of the groups. Another counter to Douglass was that even though slaves were people, they were still considered property. A hard working farmer could have used his last penny in order to purchase that slave because he was unable to tend his farm and provide for his family. One common misconception was that all slaves were beaten and treated lower than swine, while to the contrary some were treated well being given a bed and meals every day in exchange for their hard work. While Douglass may have had a bad time under the ownership of Auld, most northern states did not treat their slaves in this manner. This is one of the main reasons Douglass learned how to read, yet no credit is given to his former owner. Most slaves developed a relationship with their owners, in which their owners taught them useful skills such as reading, writing, simple math and farming skills. Another argument brought into Douglass’ speech was that most churches were segregated, and in turn perpetuated the racism that helped keep slavery alive in well. He proposed that a God that wouldn’t allow such evil and disservice in this world would contradict everything the bible proposes and teaches. He praises the writers of the constitution, considering them his equal and thanking the signers of the Declaration of Independence, calling
Frederick Douglass is known for being an outstanding orator, but he is mostly acknowledged for being an incredible abolitionist. His work to demolish slavery has been greatly known, detailing his life experience as a slave and expressing his theory on slavery. In “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,” he demonstrates the way religion and its literature, the bible, had a negative influence and effect on slavery as well as the development of white Christianity.