Frederick Douglass Nature

Time and time again, nature has proven itself as a utility for individuals to harness, and deliberately or not, people occasionally use aspects of the natural world to address their personal regards. Frederick Douglass, in his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, casts nature not only as a portrayal of the sceneries of his experiences as a slave, but also as a depiction of the oppression of slaves and the coping mechanisms that they look to in order to endure through the cruel and unjust treatment and control by slave owners. Douglass’s autobiography contains countless scenes where he wraps nature within the plot. Through his careful, yet, consistent use of striking imagery, he constructs metaphors and symbols which lay the foundation

With no doubt, slavery was a period of great suffering for the black community, but the downtime slaves had between each laborious day was an opportunity for them to reflect on their life. When Douglass describes the journey of privileged slaves to Colonel Lloyd’s home plantation, the Great House Farm, he writes: “The slaves selected to go to the Great House Farm, for the monthly allowance for themselves and their fellow-slaves, were peculiarly enthusiastic. While on their way, they would make the dense old woods, for miles around, reverberate with their wild songs, revealing at once the highest joy and the deepest sadness” (11). Many slaves held Colonel Lloyd’s plantation in high regard due to the quality of labor that overseers expect there. Douglass places specific emphasis on the flurry of emotions that slaves experience, however, a point that he understates is the length of the travel that slaves must make to reach Colonel Lloyd’s plantation. With all that time for oneself, slaves often contemplated their lives in the miles of woods that acted as their chamber of reflection. The long walks through the woods and the singing done by slaves on these walks are representative of tools used by slaves to cope with their abuse and to express their suppressed negative

Douglass summarizes the soul-deteriorating valuation of how he and the other slaves on Captain Anthony’s property were ranked: “Men and women, old and young, married and single, were ranked with horses, sheep, and swine. There were horses and men, cattle and women, pigs and children, all holding the same rank in the scale of being, and were all subjected to the same narrow examination. Silvery-headed age and sprightly youth, maids and matrons, had to undergo the same indelicate inspection. At this moment, I saw more clearly than ever the brutalizing effects of slavery upon both slave and slaveholder” (39-40). By empathizing with how slaves were oppressed and dehumanized through the cruel actions by slave owners, Douglass creates a somber tone and continues his account by juxtaposing slaves to simple farm animals with no human qualities. This juxtaposition also reveals the parallelism of showing how slave owners acted like there was no diversity among slaves. Additionally, there exists a deeper meaning within Douglass’s use of the term, “brutalize.” While it distinctly means to treat something in a savage and violent way, this term also means to change someone into a brute, ultimately removing their