During the 1800’s slaves were brought to the thirteen colonies from the Atlantic Slave Trade to work without or little amount of pay and do nothing more or less without the guarantee of freedom. Slaves were dehumanized every way possible from refusing to take orders, to not being able to do the job and from religion belief according to the slave-owners. Frederick Douglass, born in Tuckahoe (present day Maryland) experienced the wrath of slavery and more during his time serving as a slave for multiple families/masters. Son of a slave-owner, Douglass did not possess his own agency due to the fact his mother was a slave even though his father was a white man, a common occurrence during slavery to increase and own more slaves and at the same time …show more content…
When Douglass was inherited by slave-owner Mr. Austin Gore, he recalls him being the cruelest slave-owner he has ever had. Douglass describes him as awful and Gore was one of those slave-owners that can torture the slightest look or gesture a slave gives to him (24). Douglass recalls and describes the type of punishment he would do to slaves, he states Gore was the committed the grossest deed to them. There was an incident where a slave attempted to run away from Gore but tripped and fell in a creek due to the fear brought upon Gore. Gore chased the slave identified as Demby, giving him a chance to surrender but Douglass states, “Mr. Gore told him he would give him three calls, and if he did not come out after the third call he would shoot him… without consultation or deliberation, after three calls he raised his musket to his face and shoot him” (25). What happened afterword’s was gruesome as Douglass details how his body was never recovered and left to sink, living brain debris floating through the creek. Another example of dehumanizing slaves was him being asked to strip naked. Douglass was on assignment and after he failed to get the job done he was ordered to do it again from the beginning, but this time his slave-owner Mr. Covey, accompanied him and in the middle of going back home, Mr. …show more content…
There has been a stigma that only slaves were brutally punished for misbehaving or attempting to escape, but behind closed doors women suffered the same amount of pain or if not worse than slaves from their masters. Douglass witnessed a number of incidents and describes the abuse as, “Master would keep this lacerated young woman tied up for four hours at a time… he would tie her up and hit her for breakfast, leave her, return for dinner and whip her again” (44). Another time he witnessed his Aunt Hester abused from what he believes to be his father, “… he took her into the kitchen and stripped her down, leaving her neck, shoulders, and back entirely naked… he commences to lay on the heavy cow swing” (16). Douglass included this event in is narrative because to paint the picture for readers that men had complete control of their slaves and women at home. Whatever the man thought was best to handle certain situations from slaves disobeying orders or thinking women had no rights of their own, the men during the 1800’s would use abuse to assert their dominance and authority. Douglas described these events in great detail, from the slave masters’ tying their hands together and being hanged, stripping them naked, leaving half their body exposed, but most disturbingly Douglass witnessed and describe the cries and blood dripping to the floor. Revealing the gruesome details from women abused is
One of the amazing things about the story is the level of description and imagery that Douglass uses to describe the suffering around him. The excerpt spans a mere three days, but most of the text focuses on his abuse and battle with Mr. Covey. Douglass skips over the common parts of his life to further his case against slavery. By doing this, the Northerners rea...
Frederick Douglass was an enslaved person and was born in Talbot County, Maryland. He had no knowledge of his accurate age like most of the enslaved people. He believed that his father was a white man, and he grew up with his grandmother. Douglass and his mother were separated when he was young, which was also common in the lives of the enslaved people. This concept of separation was used as a weapon to gain control of the enslaved people. In short, despite the obstacles he had to endure, he was able to gain an education and fight for his freedom in any means necessary.
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...
Amid a period of war prompting recreation of the United States of America there were few that had such energy to take a stand in opposition to subjection to set forward laws of fairness. A got away slave, Frederick Douglass, conflicted with current times with the likelihood of being caught and executed turned into an abolitionist. Ladies in the public eye were seen as valuable items, you shouldn 't publically beat ladies. Douglass ' account demonstrates numerous slave ladies being beaten by other men and ladies. The majority of the rough scenes in included ladies. He relates ladies with anguish. Frederick makes a unique purpose of depicting the traumatic sight of female slaves being beaten and mishandled. The assault of female slaves by their lords was another regular event. He begins off the story in part one with the beating of his close relative Hester.
The narrative of Douglass quotes "Mr. Covey gave me a very severe whipping, cutting my back causing blood to run, and raising ridges on my flesh as large as my little finger". This quote also shows how horrible the men were abused and beaten too. Although, they had more of a chance to fight back against their masters, which is proven in this quote "This gave me assurance, and I held him uneasy, causing the blood to run where I touched him with the ends of my fingers". The quote explains how Douglass finally fought back against his master, after being beaten several times by him. The mental abuse is shown in the quote from Douglass's narrative that states" Mr.Covey succeeded in breaking me. I was broken in body, soul, and spirit.". This shows that the masters would mentally break the men, so they would behave and listen to them better. Most masters would drain all the spirit out of the men to make the threat of the slaves fighting back very rare. Those were the horrible struggles the men had to deal with in
A staunch abolitionist, Douglass would take the country by storm through the power of his words and writings. His narrative was unique in regards to how it was written and the content it holds. Unlike most biographies of freed slaves, Douglass would write his own story and with his own words. His narrative would attempt to understand the effects slavery was having on not just the slaves, but the slaveholders as well. The success of his biography, however, did not rest on the amount of horror in it but from the unmistakable authenticity it provided. His narrative would compel his readers to take action with graphic accounts of the lashes slaves would receive as punishment, “the loude...
Slavery existed in North America for 245 years, 245 years long and hard years in which slaves were treated with disrespect, put to shame, and abused. Some slaves have written about their hardships. One of these slaves was Frederick Douglass and in “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave,” Douglass maintains that slavery dehumanized the slave. Dehumanization is the psychological process of demonizing the enemy, making them seem less than human and hence not worthy of humane treatment. This can lead to increased violence, human rights violations, war crimes, and genocide. Fredrick Douglas was born in february of 1818 and died on February 20, 1895, he's an american social reformer, abolitionist, writer, and statesmen.
During the time of slavery, slaves were put to work on plantation, fields, and farms. They were considered property to their slave-owners and put under unfair living conditions. Growing up in this era, we can see the injustice between white and colored people. And one slave by the name of Fredrick Douglass witnessed this unjust tension. And because of this tension, dehumanizing practices became prominent among the slaves and in slave society. The most prominent of these injustices is the desire of slave owners to keep their slaves ignorant. This practice sought to deprive the slaves of their human characteristics and made them less valued. Fredrick Douglass was able to endure and confront this issue by asserting his own humanity. He achieved
Finally, Fredrick Douglass exemplifies his discrimination against racial pride. Throughout the novel, Frederick Douglass gets beaten, whipped, starved, and much more. Mr. Auld (overseer of Frederick Douglass; planation) says that teaching blacks to read will mean they are useless, Frederick Douglass understands that blacks are as capable of learning to read as whites are, and only lack the opportunity to learn. Mr. Auld even insisted on saying, “ if you teach that nigger (speaking of myself) how to read, there would be no keeping him.” Fredrick then later says, “I now understood the pathway from slavery to freedom “ (Douglass 48). Fighting discrimination from slavery was difficult, but Frederick Douglass represented racial pride by fighting
Frederick Douglass’s narrative unveils a large number of ways in which African Americans suffered under the oppression of slavery. For instance, many slaves including Douglass himself, did not know their own birthdays or much of their own family history. This was most likely the result of slave children being separated from their actual blood relatives either at birth or due to being sold to different slave owners.
Brutally beaten and wronged, Frederick Douglass overcame the challenges of being a slave. He lived most of his life as a slave until one day he was freed. In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Douglass tells of his life as a slave, and the challenges he faced to be freed. On the road to freedom, Douglass was not treated anywhere near equal. In fact, equality was a big problem during the time of slavery.
The practice of slavery is a way to dehumanize a certain group of people. It gives slave masters the absolute power and autonomy to control slaves’ lives and to use them to achieve desires. It also enables slave masters to use them for business purposes making slaves work at several industries such as farming and poultry. The poor treatment of slaves before the American Civil War has been adequate detailed in several published books, articles, and even in the movie industry. The primary purpose of this text is to give a detailed account of the poor treatment of slaves in the Frederick Douglass’ narration.
In this narrative, Douglass describes his life as a slave in ways that is brutalizing and dehumanizing. He wants his readers to understand that concept. By doing this, Douglass writes, “I was seized with a violent aching of the head, attended with extreme dizziness; I trembled in every limb” (416). Douglass uses diction such as seized, aching, extreme dizziness, and trembled to help create a picture of the pain he had felt during his experiences of being a slave for Mr. Covey. Another example is when he writes, “I told him as well as I could, for I scarce had strength to speak. He then gave me a savage kick in the side, and told me to get up I tried to do so, but fell back in the attempt. He gave me another kick, and again told me to rise. I again tried, and succeeded in gaining my feet; but stooping to get the tub with which I was feeding the fan, I again staggered and fell” (416-17). Words like scarce, savage, and staggered place imagery into the reader’s minds of what he went through as a slave. One other way that Douglass shows how his words emphasize the message is when he writes, “The blood was yet oozing from the wound on my head. For a time I thought I should bleed to death; and think now that I should have done so, but that the blood so matted my hair as to stop the w...
Within the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave” Douglass discusses the deplorable conditions in which he and his fellow slaves suffered from. While on Colonel Lloyd’s plantation, slaves were given a “monthly allowance of eight pounds of pork and one bushel of corn” (Douglass 224). Their annual clothing rations weren’t any better; considering the type of field work they did, what little clothing they were given quickly deteriorated. The lack of food and clothing matched the terrible living conditions. After working on the field all day, with very little rest the night before, they must sleep on the hard uncomfortably cramped floor with only a single blanket as protection from the cold. Coupled with the overseer’s irresponsible and abusive use of power, it is astonishing how three to four hundred slaves did not rebel. Slave-owners recognized that in able to restrict and control slaves more than physical violence was needed. Therefore in able to mold slaves into the submissive and subservient property they desired, slave-owners manipulated them by twisting religion, instilling fear, breaking familial ties, making them dependent, providing them with an incorrect view of freedom, as well as refusing them education.
Throughout the narrative, Douglas gives numerous examples of the dehumanizing violence towards slaves by their masters and overseers. This violence is explicitly described in Douglass’ depiction of Master Colonel Lloyd and his overseer, Austin Gore.