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Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass Essay

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Frederick Douglass Essay People everywhere dream of freedom. It is the right to make one’s own choices in life and being able to enjoy them which makes it such an essential piece of our lives. Frederick Douglass's book, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave written by himself reveals many of the injustices that African Americans faced in the early 1800s under Southern slavery. Slaves were held in a system of absolute and total oppression; they were kept in ignorance of their birthdays, separated from family and friends, endured beatings from masters, raped, forbidden to be educated, and deprived of food, clothing, and sleep. This was the life Douglass experienced as a slave, but he eventually finds his way to freedom. …show more content…

When Douglass imagines being free, he wants to be able to choose his own destiny without having to lie and hide from his true feelings. From the day he was born until the day he received freedom, Douglass had no say in any part of his life. Everything he did and had was forced upon him by his slave owners and people who had power over him. For slave owners to get slaves to agree to slavery, they had to destroy the slaves mentally. Slaves didn’t choose to be slaves because no person in this universe would accept slavery to be part of their life. Slaves were lied to and manipulated by slave owners, thinking the life that slave owners were offering would change their life. Douglass says that “to make a contented slave ... make a thoughtless one … darken his moral … feel that slavery is right… only when he ceases to be a man” (104). Douglass shows that slaves were tricked into accepting their enslavement. No one in this universe in his right mind would ever accept such a condition, there is only one thing for the masters to do and it was to destroy the slaves' minds. Douglass was a smart man and he didn’t like the feeling of being controlled by others. But when he was under the control of Mr.Covey he was broken down and beaten until he

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