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Frederick Douglass Thesis

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In the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, written by Frederick Douglass, the author recounts his life as a slave and the journey that he took to free himself. In spite of the many reasons he had to give up hope, Douglass’s faith never seemed to falter. To maintain a positive outlook, he continuously experimented with different methods of escaping. Along with creating relationships with those that would would aid him in his attempt to achieve freedom. Douglass' story opens with the few things that he knows about his birth parents. His mother is a slave and his father is a slave owner. Through the duration of the book, Douglass covers the commonality of white slave owners raping their enslaved women, to fulfill their sexual needs and for an easy way to expand their …show more content…

Douglass manages to provide a closer look into the ways people responded to the evils of servitude. The stories of all the abuse that Douglass saw and endured shows those who follow just how enslavement can affect those involved. With the book written from Douglass’s perspective, the reader can easily feel what it was like to be dehumanized and stripped of your dignity. The graphic components of his writing have us living it with him. His words paint a moving picture in our minds, helping us visualize it as if it is a movie. Despite his incredible writing style, he seems to have some missing aspects. When he talks about the reasons slaves are allowed holidays, he only mentions that it is for them to feel liberated through intoxication. He neglects to discuss the need for the slave owners to have a break from managing and supervising slaves. Although it is not as strenuous of a position, slave owners need a hiatus from their jobs. These small disregarded details cause some confusion to arise in me from time to time, but it did not stop me from understanding the overall

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542 Words | 3 Pages

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass addresses an intensely problematic issue the South had been facing for decades: slavery. He was one of the few slaves who could read and write, which allowed him to be able to write his book. The main reason Douglass wrote the book was to educate people from the North about how slaves were being treated in the South and to attempt to have slavery abolished. Douglass uses his personal stories as a slave to make a persuasive case against slavery.

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450 Words | 2 Pages

The corrupt and irresponsible power that the slave owners use and endure over their slaves is detrimental and has a massive effect on the slave owners’ own moral health. The theme helps the image of slavery as seen by Douglass’ explaining it as beyond natural for the victims involved. Douglass also describes a behavioral pattern that slaveholders have as it portrays the hurting effect of slavery. He points to how many slave-owning men have been tempted to pursue adultery and rape, becoming fathers of the born children with their female slaves. Such action and deceit threatens the unity of the slave owner’s family.

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744 Words | 3 Pages

Douglass opens up the novel with a description of his family background. He doesn’t really know who his father is but it is said to be his first plantation owner. Which i think might be one of the earliest written knowings of mulatto children.

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444 Words | 2 Pages

Frederick Douglass aims to point out the injustices of slavery in his autobiography consisting of personal experiences. Douglass illustrates the struggles that come with being a slave through recollection of experiences and circumstances that he lived through while creating vivid images producing emotion from the audience. Strong word choice and purposeful syntax further push Douglass's argument as well. Douglass’s attempts to create emotions in the minds of the reader through his use of vivid imagery in the descriptions of the slaves’ poor treatment illuminates his most valuable strategy. Not only does Douglass pathetically appeal to the reader in these descriptions but they are also first-hand accounts which make the gruesome depictions stick with the reader.

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1183 Words | 5 Pages

In it, Douglass describes his infancy separation beside his mother, his battle to educate himself in conformity with examine or write, the beastly whippings that witnessed then received, then his determination to keep free, wholethe while stressing his own humanity, or the inhumanity of the dictation so much saved him a slave. Douglass’s autobiography was once an

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115 Words | 1 Pages

Douglass’s Narrative writings show us that the masters ignore their slaves, and keep them ignorant and uneducated. They wanted their slaves to know that the slaves were born as slaves, and there was no way out to get rid of being a slave. The masters of the slaves wanted their slaves to accept and know that slavery was natural. The slaveholders did not want their slaves to write and read because if they knew to write and read, the slavery might have been ended after a while. Another point was to control over the slaves by leaving them ignorant.

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420 Words | 2 Pages

In his book The Narrative of the Life of Frederic Douglass the author attempts to show the negative effects of slavery to the white readers in the North. In his account Douglass shows how slavery is not only dehumanizing the slaves but also the slaveholders themselves. The detrimental effects of the slavery system are shown as early as Douglass’s childhood. His father being white, and the master of the boy’s mother, is encouraged by the power he holds not only to break maternal bonds between a mother and her child, but also to personally distance himself from his own so flesh and blood so much as to whip them or sell them off. This done either out of economic interest or out of deference for his wife.

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670 Words | 3 Pages

In Frederick Douglass’s autobiography, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, he puts us in his shoes, recalling his encounter being born into slavery, and all the struggles that came with the ordeal. His story contains elements of the unimaginable realities of slavery, in pursuance of reaching out to an audience to spread awareness. A short, yet powerful part of his story describes his adventure escaping slavery into freedom. Douglass uses figurative language such as similes, metaphors, and parallelism in order to represent the exhilaration, loneliness and helplessness in results to his passage to freedom.

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1319 Words | 6 Pages

Slaves were treated with the lowest of respect, and had no form of justice or rights. The slave system during the time that Frederic Douglass was a slave was corrupted, and he made that very clear within his narrative. In Douglass’ narrative we are shown how little rights the slaves

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964 Words | 4 Pages

Frederick Douglass was one of the most prominent black leader of the nineteenth century. He was an abolitionist, women’s rights advocate, journalist, newspaper editor, social reformer, and a race leader. In “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, Douglass narrates his lifetime occurrences and experiences as a slave, in much detail. Douglass’ key objective was to inform his spectators about the reality of slavery and influence them that such an outrageous convention should be abolished. Douglass was born as a slave in Maryland in 1818.

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498 Words | 2 Pages

The Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass shows the imbalance of power between slaves and their masters. In his book, Douglass proves that slavery is a destructive force not only to the slaves, but also for the slaveholders. “Poison of the irresponsible power” that masters have upon their slaves that are dehumanizing and shameless, have changed the masters themselves and their morality(Douglass 39). This amount of power and control in contact with one man breaks the kindest heart and the purest thoughts turning the person evil and corrupt. Douglass uses flashbacks that illustrate the emotions that declare the negative effects of slavery.

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1189 Words | 5 Pages

In the book, Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass: an American Slave, Douglass tells the story of living as a slave in Maryland, the hardships he went through and his tough journey to freedom. Regarded as one of the most compelling anti slavery documents produced by a fugitive slave, the narrative is also valued as an affecting argument for human rights. Douglass's story continues to resonate that his life embodies the American dream of overcoming obstacles and reaching one's goals after enduring the terrible horrors of slavery. Fredrick Douglas was a slave who lived in Maryland; his masters were Captain Anthony and Colonel Lloyd. Douglas did not know who his father was, however, he believed that he was his master.

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392 Words | 2 Pages

Douglass managed to overcome the maltreatment of his wretched slave owners through the eventual attainment of freedom. The injustice imposed upon the African-American slaves by their owners was the crux of Douglass’s motivation to escape this inhumane life. Adolescents in today’s society could use Frederick’s determination as an example of moving forward to better oneself or one’s situation regardless of

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505 Words | 3 Pages

In this narrative, he also shows the reader himself experience many beating and acts of torture. His life was a change forever when he was sent to work on a plantation in Baltimore, from where he escapes. He takes the reader from his experience of fleeing to a free state in the north. The whole narrative describes his experience in vivid details his experience of being a slave it also reveals his psychological insight into the slave vs master relationship. The narrative is a powerful document that shows Douglass ability to transform himself from an illiterate, oppressed slave to an educated.

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1520 Words | 7 Pages

Nonetheless, the real realization of the horrific implications the slavery has brought into the lives of many innocent captive people frequently comes only by getting to know the real experiences and the real emotions one has gone through while being a slave. The narrative of Frederick Douglass’ life does exactly that. It lets every reader become aware of more than just historic facts on slavery in America. It lets one see the effects of a system that allows one human being to have an ultimate power over the other on the emotional, mental and physical states of the person who is in

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