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Frederick Douglass Inhumane Essay

756 Words4 Pages

The story of Frederick Douglass’ is one of the most gruesome stories ever written in American literary history. The narrative goes in-depth about how the process of slavery was. It talks about how people would get whipped for the smallest of issues, dying if they resist enough, and even the process of the slave trade. It even shows how people become very different after the entire system of slavery gets into their minds. Through his powerful narrative, Frederick Douglass demonstrates how slavery dehumanizes not only the enslaved but also the enslaver, as it strips individuals of their basic humanity and perpetuates a system of cruelty and oppression. Frederick Douglass was a very young child when he was introduced to the culture of how …show more content…

Many masters act very cruel to their slaves and give no regard for their well-being or how they feel. They will whip them if they do something wrong, cut off an ear if they try to escape a multitude of times, and even kill them if they feel like the slave is doing too much. An example of this is how Mr. Gore had shot Demby. Demby had been resisting Mr. Gore’s call and had been in a creek trying to resist punishment. After the third call, Mr. Gore shot Demby and brutally murdered him. As Douglass recalls, “His mangled body sank out of sight, and blood and brains marked the water where he had stood.” (Douglass 20) The worst part of this entire case is how Mr. Gore got off scot-free because he had told the people that he was setting an “example” to intimidate the other slaves. The last example of this is when Douglass moves in with Sophia Auld and Hugh Auld. Sophia is a very sweet lady and had never had slaves. She is unfamiliar with the way slaves are treated so she occasionally gives Douglass great life lessons. One of them is teaching him how to read and write. Douglass records this incident by saying, “She very kindly commenced to teach me the A, B, C. ... Mr. Auld found out what was going on, and at once forbade Mrs. Auld to instruct me further, telling her, among other things, that it was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read.” (Douglass, 29) After

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More evidence of objectification is shown in the murder of Demby by Mr. Gore. To escape more whipping, Demby submerges himself into a creek and refuses to come out, resulting in Mr. Gore shooting Demby in the face. Justifying the murder, Gore argues that “if one slave refused to be corrected, and escaped with his life…the result…would be freedom of the slaves.” Gore’s justification objectifies Demby’s mortality by turning it into a tool to teach the other slaves of what would happen should they disobey. Finally, Douglass tells of his own dehumanization through violence as master Covey, the “slave breaker,” beats him after becoming too weak to work.

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In his article "Learning to Read and Write" Frederick Douglass portrays how he figured out how to read and write furthermore the difficulties he needed to manage in his state of being a slave since youth. We find that Douglass was in hand by the Hugh family for a long time. it's inside this day and age that he figured out how to read and write. At the beginning, Douglass was told to read by Mrs. Hugh, notwithstanding, a little while later she took identical approach towards slavery as her significant other and normally much more dreadful. Where as once she would support Douglass' learning, she immediately attempted to end it at any expense.

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Frederick Douglass was born in 1818 to slavery, with a black mother and a white father who was rumored to be his master. Douglass was enslaved during his entire youth and 7 years after escaping slavery; he wrote “Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave” which entails his horrifying experiences in slavery and his journey to ultimate freedom. Douglass was a well-known American abolitionist and activist. In his narrative, he used emotive, descriptive language in combination with personal anecdotes to appeal to his white Christian audience to expose the reality of the dehumanization that comes with slavery. Douglass refers to several different instances of dehumanization throughout his narrative.

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Frederick Douglass Learning To Read Essay

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702 Words | 3 Pages

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753 Words | 4 Pages

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973 Words | 4 Pages

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1838 Words | 8 Pages

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