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Comparing Fedrick Douglass My Bondage And My Freedom

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Recommended: The dehumanization of slaves

In most history classes, it is taught to view just the lives of the slaves as victims, and not considering any other point of view. Douglass wrote, My Bondage and My Freedom, to get the point across that slaves were not the only victims. Slaves, slave owners and white working people were all victims of the system. Fedrick Douglass wrote about the things he saw growing up as a slave. He saw each point of view loud and clear. Not each slave was treated the same, some were special to their slave holders. While others, were treated like animals. These victims are affected in different ways from each other. Some were victimized mentally and others physically, and some both. Just because you were not a slave does not mean you were in the clear. The …show more content…

From the moment, they received the title, “slave”, each person was dehumanized, and stripped of their identity. Many slaves who were born into slavery, have no recollection of who they are. From babies, they are taken away from their mother and never told where, when or to who the mother was. They separated them from birth to avoid the connection from mother to baby, so they would not grieve the person that carried them for 9 months. This also was an effective way of dehumanization. Towards the beginning of slavery, when there were indentured slaves, white slaves were treated a whole lot different than black slaves. The white slaves were treated bad just not as bad. Yes, the white slaves were tied and whipped, but the black slaves barely had clothes on, they were practically naked (Elizabeth Sprigs 47-48). Slowly evolving the white supremacy came along and established the color of the skin with slavery. Making slavery a lifelong duty and no longer a sentence needed to work off. That is when most slave holders had no respect whatsoever for these slaves. They expected them to act like machines, do not feel, just do (Pettengil 02-1-17). Slaves had no choice, they seen whites as a person of power, and intelligence. But Douglass was a bright young man, who was very educated and believed in

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Frederick Douglass published two similar versions of his fight with the ‘slave-breaker’ Edward Covey in the tenth chapter of his The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, and in the seventeenth chapter of My Bondage and My Freedom. By comparing the two accounts it is possible to see an evolution of his thoughts on abolishing slavery and person hood which occurred in the years which transpired between the two works, 1845 and 1855. In the first account which Douglass wrote at around the age of 27 he narrates a physical confrontation where he refuses to allow himself to be whipped. Douglass struggles for two hours with Covey and also fights off Covey’s cousin at the same time.

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Douglass tried to get his point across by teaching white people what they’re really doing to slaves. He tried to get them to realize that their actions will have consequences. He used God in his speeches to show what the white people were doing was a crime against

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The two central ideas in “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” is what produces a complex account of Frederick Douglass’s experiences in Baltimore. Let’s further explain these two central ideas in order to better understand how they do this. The first central idea is slavery can have a horrific effect on both slaves and slave owners. Douglass gives two reasons behind this idea in the text.

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In “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, Douglass narrates in detail the oppressions he went through as a slave before winning his freedom. In the narrative, Douglass gives a picture about the humiliation, brutality, and pain that slaves go through. We can evidently see that Douglass does not want to describe only his life, but he uses his personal experiences and life story as a tool to rise against slavery. He uses his personal life story to argue against common myths that were used to justify the act of slavery. Douglass invalidated common justification for slavery like religion, economic argument and color with his life story through his experiences torture, separation, and illiteracy, and he urged for the end of slavery.

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All of Douglass’s book starts with him coping with slavery. He had a strong motivational reason to write these books relating to such a strong topic. As an abolitionist with very strong motives, he wanted to show the world how bad slavery really

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Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness was promised to all American citizens in the constitution. In Douglass’s My Bondage and My Freedom, as well as his 1852 speech, The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro, he makes it crystal clear that free black americans, the individuals whose sweat and tears built America, were exempt from these promises. Interestly enough, the same rights and treatments that Douglass deserved in America, he enjoyed during his hiatus as an orator in Great Britain. As the mother country of America, one would expect the experience in both countries to be similar.

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Never giving up and never accepting defeat is what it means to be indefatigable. Frederick Douglass is a prime example of someone who is indefatigable. Despite his hardships Frederick Douglass never gave up. Indefatigability defines My Bondage and My Freedom because Douglass never accepted defeat in his goal to learn to read.

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Slave owners also were aware to keep slaves under control they had to keep them undereducated and unaware. Birthdays and ages are kept from slaves to keep them in the ignorance. It gives the slave owners a disoriented power over their slaves to disqualify them from simple things. For if the slaves could not read, write, have healthy relationships with family members, or know their age they would have to rely on their owners for all

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Within “My Bondage and My Freedom,” Douglass uses diction throughout the autobiography to display his tone of understanding, and how slavery affects both the slave and the slave holder which causes the mood of frustration for the reader. When communicating a tone of understanding in “My Bondage and My Freedom”, Douglass uses diction to support it. The author uses language to truly present his tone towards the text. Throughout the story he manages to stay quite neutral with his tone. He appears to be understanding of the slaveholder’s point of view.

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Douglass was a slave pretty much his whole life. He escaped when he was 20 and went on to become a world renowned anti-slavery activist. Frederick Douglass was a leader in the anti-slavery

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They were punished as if they were animals that needed to be disciplined. Unfortunately this is not the only cruelty of being a slave, Slave parent and child were often separated from each other, no matter what age they were. “My mother and I were separated

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The legendary abolitionist and orator Frederick Douglass was one of the most important social reformers of the nineteenth century. Being born into slavery on a Maryland Eastern Shore plantation to his mother, Harriet Bailey, and a white man, most likely Douglass’s first master was the starting point of his rise against the enslavement of African-Americans. Nearly 200 years after Douglass’s birth and 122 years after his death, The social activist’s name and accomplishments continue to inspire the progression of African-American youth in modern society. Through his ability to overcome obstacles, his strive for a better life through education, and his success despite humble beginnings, Frederick Douglass’s aspirations stretched his influence through

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Douglass is a African American that was a slave and did a Narrative about his time being a slave and in his Narrative he “threw light” at the American slave system. African American slave Frederick Douglass lived through a time of racism and how slavery was a natural thing to do but was a very awful thing. And slavery is when families who had colored skin were separated and sold of to a person that can do anything to them, the slave is pretty much like the slaveholder’s property. And in this essay I will talk about how Douglass’s position differs from those who supported slavery and also I will be talking about How Douglass used his Narrative to share his position. How Douglass “throws light” on the American Slave system is by showing

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What common themes bond together the literary works of the 1800’s? Frederick Douglass and Kate Chopin both realized that people were not being treated fairly and thus it influenced their writing. Through personal experiences and observations Frederick Douglass conveyed how African Americans in My Bondage and My Freedom were treated unfairly. Kate Chopin used the plot to show how women were treated unfairly in “The Story of an Hour”. My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass tells of some of the experiences he went through as a slave.

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With this, Douglass is addressing the topic of slavery and whether to abolish it or not. And goes about telling the hardships he went through.

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