Frederick Douglass s Narrative Of The Life - 1516 Words

Grant Sumner Dr. Wiewora History 101 04/25/2017 Frederick Douglass To Douglass, freedom is more than merely freedom from the lash and cruel conditions. It also encompasses intellectual and emotional freedom. He sees that true freedom exists in the ability to read and reason and is a mental state; Douglass feels that slavery is not only a practice, but a mindset maintained through those practices. In Douglass’s Narrative of the Life, he maintains that slavery is an abhorrent practice that strips the humanity from both slaves and slaveholders alike, enabled by forcing ignorance onto the slaves. First, dehumanization of those enslaved in Douglass’s narrative can be separated into three categories: examples of the treatment of human beings in†¦show more content†¦In this situation, the slave owners have legal freedom to act upon their lusts; this results in slave women being helpless victims, and the mulatto children being subject to cruelty by their masters’s wives. In fact, this dehumanization goes back to the very constitution, where the Three Fifths Compromise can be seen in essence reducing someone to property, without rights, and only holding value in what the person can provide. The true method of dehumanization occurs in the forced ignorance that takes place: â€Å"By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant...They seldom come nearer to it than planting time, harvest time, cherry time†¦Ã¢â‚¬ (236). A birthday is a symbol of a person and their separation from animals. As Douglass mentions, they have just as much information in this regard as an animal, which is what they are being reduced to: animals bred for a specific purpose, to slave away for another person. The slaves only being able to identify their birth with a specific work related time of the year is evidence of this. Combining the lack of knowledge of one’s birth, they are stripped from their mothers at an early age â€Å"....hinder the development of the child’s affection toward its mother, and to blunt and destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child.† (237). This is the inevitableShow MoreRelatedThe Life Of Frederick Douglass s The Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick 1306 Words   |  6 Pagesthe practice slavery as neither good nor bad, but just part of Southern life going on for hundreds of years. Frederick Douglass, a slave who had escaped to the North, after years of abuse through slavery, knew that in order to stop slavery, he had to persuade all the people in the North to vehemently oppose it as much as he did himself. Through the â€Å"Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass†, which he published in 1845, Douglass focuses on the process of dehumanization he and thousands of others wentRead MoreFrederick Douglass s Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglas16 74 Words   |  7 Pagespopular in the southern states, among these slaves, one slave in particular impacted the 19th century was Frederick Douglass. Although he was a slave for most of his life, Douglass eventually became a freeman, a social reform, writer, and an abolitionist for slavery. However, before he became a freeman, Douglass experienced a brutal life as a slave. He faced dehumanization in his early life, but accomplished what most slaves we not allowed to do; which is getting educated, by self-educating himselfRead MoreFrederick Douglass s Narrative Of The Life Of Fredrick Douglass1693 Words   |  7 Pagesin the city. Frederick Douglass the author of Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass was born and raised on the plantation as a slave. From his early years Douglass experienced life as a slave on a plantation. He was soon relocated to Maryland at the age of seven to the slave owner’s brother Mr. Auld. Douglass is moved back and forth from the plantation to the city. The areas of food, treatment and punishment, and clothing were contrasting between plantation and city. His narrative reveals theRead MoreAn Analysis Of Frederick Douglass s The Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Essay1284 Words   |  6 Pagesof Frederick Douglass s NarrativeChristianity quite often, especially when associated to the system of slavery becomes even more of a contentious issue than it already is. In The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass presents the theme of perversion of Christianity by slaveholders as a way to bring out the contradiction that lie deep within slaveholders adulterated interpretation of the belief system. In this paper, I will highlight these perversions that Douglass discussesRead MoreFrederick Douglass s Narrative Of The Life Of A Slave1662 Words   |  7 Pages The life of a slave was brutal, demeaning and dehumanizing; it ripped them away from loved ones, their identity, any concept of hope and any ink ling of one s worth as a person. Escape from a life such as that was almost inconceivable; which brings about the question of how did Frederick Douglass manage to free himself from enslavement. Frederick Douglass s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave asserts that Douglass needed specific mental and environmental parameters toRead MoreFrederick Douglass s Narrative Of The Life Of Fredrick Douglass1281 Words   |  6 PagesFredrick Douglass Outcomes of Sentimentalism In the â€Å"Narrative of the life of Fredrick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself, written in the month of August 1841, demonstrates the double purpose of the work as both a personal account and a public argument. Douglass introduces the reader to his own circumstances such as grief, sorrow and emptiness in his birthplace and the fact that he does not know his own age. He then generalizes from his own experience, by explaining that almost no slavesRead MoreThe Life Of Frederick Douglass s Narrative Of The Life Of Fredrick Douglass967 Words   |  4 Pagesthe United States many slaves like Fredrick Douglass had to escape to fight for freedom to become abolitionists. To expose the terror and cruelties that he faced from his owners and overseers as a slave as narrated in â€Å"Narrative of the life of Fredrick Douglass.† Being a slave was difficult from the beginning. In the case of Fredrick Douglass he was a product of unwanted love. Born into slavery with no record or â€Å"accurate knowledge of age.†(Douglass) He was the son of Harriet Bailey, who was â€Å"†¦theRead MoreThe Life Of Frederick Douglass s The Narrative Of The Life Of Fredrick Douglass 983 Words   |  4 Pagesthe United States many slaves like Fredrick Douglass had to escape to fight for freedom. To become abolitionists. To expose the terror and cruelties that he faced from his owners and overseers as a slave wrote in the â€Å"Narrative of the life of Fredrick Douglass.† ​Being a slave was difficult from the beginning. In the case of Fredrick Douglass he was a product of unwanted love. He was born into slavery with no record or â€Å"accurate knowledge of age.†(Douglass) He was the son of Harriet Bailey, who wasRead MoreThe Slaveowner ´s Point of View in the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass1118 Words   |  5 Pages In the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass depicts his life as a plantation slave, offering misinformed northern Christians and reformers in-depth accounts of the physical and emotional cruelties of slavery. As Douglass recounts his relationship and interactions with the harsh Mr. Covey, he disputes the basis on which southern slaveowners defended slavery. Douglass dispels their claims of encompassing a Christian duty to civilize blacks who they deemed naturally inferiorRead MoreFrederick Douglass s Narrative Of The Life Of Fredrick Douglass, An American Slave1434 Words   |  6 Pa gesAs the most famous abolitionist African American leader, Fredrick Douglass is a political, historical, and literary figure whose words still reverberate the true meaning of freedom and political, economic, and social equality for all. Born a slave, Douglass was able to recount his story to a pre-Civil War American public, which had a tremendous effect on the views whites had about slavery and its role in American society. Douglass became a self-educated man as he grew up within the entanglements