Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass Dehumanization Examples

Dehumanization is the process of making a human feel like they aren’t a human anymore, making them feel like they aren’t worthy. The Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass has a lot of dehumanization from one slave to all of them. Slaves are systematically dehumanized as a result of their treatment, their daily life, and their inability to have their basic needs met. Dehumanization is a very big factor in this book and this represents everyone in this book, mainly the slave masters. In the book, the slaves don’t get the privilege to learn how to read. They don’t get to learn because of their skin color, this is a great example of dehumanization because just because they are a different color doesn’t meant they shouldn’t be taught to

As Frederick arrived, she treated him very nice and didn’t really know how to treat him other than that. This is where Frederick struck gold, Sophie Auld didn’t know that you weren’t supposed to teach them how to read or write until her nasty husband told her how they should be treated and she turned into a cruel woman. Another source of reading was the little white boys that Frederick traded Bread with for their knowledge on how to read. The first quote I found in the book is coming from Frederick talking about Mr. Auld. “Just at this point of my progress, 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. To use his own words, further, he said, “if you give a n***** an inch, he will take an ell.” A n***** should know nothing but to obey his master to do as he is told to do” (Douglass 6). This represents my example above because Sophie Auld doesn’t know how to treat Frederick

Covey, and he is known for “breaking” slaves which means working them hard and getting them into shape. Mr. Covey puts Frederick through a lot of difficult work, and he just wants to stop learning how to write and read, and also doesn’t want to live anymore. Frederick talks about he no longer feels like a man, and feels like a little brute. This example shows that the dehumanization can make someone feel like they aren’t wanted anymore, it can make them not want to live anymore and that’s what is happening to Frederick. Frederick has no human rights and Mr. Covey doesn’t care with what he has to say because “black slaves” don’t matter and they are only used for working, and being slaves to the white people. My second example was talking about how Mr. Covey breaks slaves and turns them into acting right for the slave owners. Frederick says “I was broken in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!”(Douglass 10) . This quote I chose is talking about how Mr. Covey turned Frederick into a brute and that he was broken. Being broken in the slave world means to get the slave in shape, get them to not do anything bad for their slave owner. This method is used by the slave owners to get rid of their bad