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Similarities Between Frederick Douglass And Olaudah Equiano

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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is Douglass’s own account of his life as a slave, from birth on a rural plantation, to servitude in urban Baltimore, and at last to freedom in upstate New York. As was the case with many slave children, the date of Douglass’s birth is unknown though it is thought to be around 1817, soon after, he loses his mother, while his father is thought to be his master, Captain Anthony. By seven years old, he was given to his master’s son-in-law’s brother in Baltimore. Here Douglass experiences much more freedom, he even has the chance to learn to read, through which Douglass learns how to think and recognises the evils of slavery. When another master deems him ‘unmanageable,’ he is sent to Edward Covey, a particularly …show more content…

Though at a much earlier point in the American institution of slavery, Olaudah Equiano shares a similar description of the cruel, brutal treatment he initially received on the journey to America. Even at a different point in time, with different experience, Equiano being shipped to America from Africa, and Douglass being born into slavery, the cruelty of the institution remains. Both Equiano and Douglass see this cruelty in the form of deprivation as well as physical and verbal aggression (Finkenbine, 12-15). In “A People’s History of the United States,” Howard Zinn does something similar. In his discussion of Slavery, in the many sources Zinn draws from, the reader sees again, the similarities in the brutal lives slaves led. The difference seen in some of Zinn’s sources is that not many of them are as eloquent and educated as Douglass comes across in his narrative. We see a different correlation rom A Slave Owner’s Journal at the End of the Civil War. This document is written after the emancipation of slaves and shows a much different view of the situation from the perspective of Henry William Ravenel. In his May 30, 1865 entry Ravenel says “my negroes all express the desire to remain with me… I believe it to be real and unfeigned” (Ravenel). When comparing this outlook to Douglass’s, it seems unlikely slaves would wish to stay with their master. Douglass yearned to be freed from his master for most of his enslavement, while these slaves wish to stay with their master after their legal emancipation. Compared to other accounts of slavery, Douglass seems to have had a tragically typical experience of a slave at his time, with the benefit of education and

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350 Words | 2 Pages

Frederick Douglass published two similar versions of his fight with the ‘slave-breaker’ Edward Covey in the tenth chapter of his The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, and in the seventeenth chapter of My Bondage and My Freedom. By comparing the two accounts it is possible to see an evolution of his thoughts on abolishing slavery and person hood which occurred in the years which transpired between the two works, 1845 and 1855. In the first account which Douglass wrote at around the age of 27 he narrates a physical confrontation where he refuses to allow himself to be whipped. Douglass struggles for two hours with Covey and also fights off Covey’s cousin at the same time.

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873 Words | 4 Pages

Both King and Douglass were advocating for the same thing: their constitutional sanction of freedom. Both men, in their respective letters touch upon parallel thoughts and beliefs that revolve around the much bigger topic of racial inequality and discrimination. Both men were discriminated against and they talk about their experiences and plight in their very distinctive yet special styles. Born in the year 1817, in an era of open and unashamed slave trade, Frederick Douglass’s story begins as a serf to Mrs. Hugh in the city of Maryland.

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1830 Words | 8 Pages

It is important to understand that Frederick Douglass has no place that feels like “home.” Likewise, Douglass demonstrates the difference between country slavery and city slavery. Specifically, a city slave experiences life almost like a freeman, which

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1127 Words | 5 Pages

Frederick Douglass’s Hope for Freedom Hope and fear, two contradictory emotions that influence us all, convicted Frederick Douglass to choose life over death, light over darkness, and freedom over sin. Douglass, in Chapter ten, pages thirty-seven through thirty-nine, of the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, utilizes various rhetorical techniques and tone shifts to convey his desperation to find hope in this time of misery and suffering. Mr. Covey, who Douglass has been sent to by his master to be broken, has succeeded in nearly tearing all of Douglass’s dreams of freedom away from him. To expound on his desires to escape, Douglass presents boats as something that induces joy to most but compels slaves to feel terror. Given the multiple uses of repetition, antithesis, indirect tone shifts, and various other rhetorical techniques, we can see Douglass relaying to his audience the hardships of slavery through ethos, the disheartening times that slavery brings, and his breakthrough of determination to obtain freedom.

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1329 Words | 6 Pages

Frederick Douglass was a slave from Maryland who, through luck and intelligence, was able to escape slavery at 20 years old. In his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, he describes how it felt being a slave throughout his childhood and adolescence, as well as the traumatizing conditions on plantations. Douglass also discusses how he learned to read and write, which causes him to consider his position in slavery and helps to inspire his escape. Nevertheless, once he arrives in New York, Douglass’s hope quickly fades as he is faced with the reality of his situation; he is all alone in a place where he could easily be caught and returned to slavery, making the efforts of his escape in vain. In the excerpt from his autobiography,

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597 Words | 3 Pages

Thomas Jang Usso 101 Professor … [TITLE] The narrative of Fredrick Douglass is both powerful and pitiful. It gives a first-person perspective on the life of a slave laborer in both the rural south and the urban. Despite the horrible treatment, he was able to give himself an education with the help of those around him. By doing so he is able to read and think about the evils of slavery. Douglass’s narrative consists of the many difficulties a slave must endure, and reasons as to why slavery must be abolished.

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536 Words | 3 Pages

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is a very powerful and important piece of work when it comes to understanding the dehumanization and harsh treatment of the slaves in Pre-Civil War United States. Frederick Douglass uses crucial detail in his narrative to make the reader understand just how badly the slaves were truly treated and how profoundly unequal slaves were from everyone else during this time. Douglass uses many rhetorical strategies throughout his narrative in order to really shape how the readers are going to interpret the narrative, and to allow the reader to develop an understanding of his major theme of dehumanization. He uses detailed descriptions of brutal beatings, repeatedly mentions the contrast between the white citizens and black

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1080 Words | 5 Pages

In “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, Douglass narrates in detail the oppressions he went through as a slave before winning his freedom. In the narrative, Douglass gives a picture about the humiliation, brutality, and pain that slaves go through. We can evidently see that Douglass does not want to describe only his life, but he uses his personal experiences and life story as a tool to rise against slavery. He uses his personal life story to argue against common myths that were used to justify the act of slavery. Douglass invalidated common justification for slavery like religion, economic argument and color with his life story through his experiences torture, separation, and illiteracy, and he urged for the end of slavery.

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203 Words | 1 Pages

In his narrative, Frederick Douglass explained the concept of manhood by emphasizing on how one should be acknowledge with their own identities and have their own possession of clothes, shelter, and foods as well as privileges that God has given them. Manhood is an important measurement for Douglass because every man discovers, have desires, and develop passions whenever a man looks into himself or by a mirror of reflection. Throughout his journey as a slave, Douglass observed and experiment the cruciality of mankind when one has the power to take control of their subjects. From Mrs. Auld’s amazing lessons, education has helped him not only able to read and write but also understand the reasons behind slavery existence (Douglass, pg 22-23).

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1256 Words | 6 Pages

“The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress” - Frederick Douglass. Slavery is one of the worst tyrannical institutions that ever plagued the United States, and Frederick Douglass is one of the few lucky slaves who manages to escape its horrors and become free. The Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass is a horrid and vivid autobiography where Douglass describes his life from the beginning to his escape from slavery. This compelling novel paints the terrible truth about slavery in a first person.

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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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392 Words | 2 Pages

Douglass encountered multiple harsh realities of being enslaved. For example, the ex-slave was practically starved to death by his masters on multiple occasions. In fact, “[He was] allowed less than a half of a bushel of corn-meal per week, and very little else... It was not enough for [him] to subsist upon... A great many times [he had] been nearly perishing with hunger” (pg 31).

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932 Words | 4 Pages

Frederick Douglass wrote his narrative as a freeman, therefore, he is able to reflect on his life as a slave and decode the cryptic artifice of his former slave owners. Douglass lived a harsh life in the south before he made his valiant escape to the north, in order to evade further physical and mental torture. Therefore, Douglass is able to understand what it is like to be an invisible entity with a lack of identity, on physical earth. Metaphors are like string that Douglass uses to weave together a cohesive argument to support the eradication of slavery. As Douglass reminisces on his life he states that he “was made to drink the bitterest dregs of slavery...”

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560 Words | 3 Pages

Douglass states: “The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery” (Douglass 51). Reading and writing opened Frederick Douglass’s eyes to the cause of the abolitionist. He became knowledgeable about a topic that white slave owners tried to keep hidden from their slaves. Literacy would eventually impact his life in more ways than what he could see while he was a young slave under Master Hugh’s

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973 Words | 4 Pages

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is Frederick Douglass’s autobiography in which Douglass goes into detail about growing up as a slave and then escaping for a better life. During the early-to-mid 1800s, the period that this book was written, African-American slaves were no more than workers for their masters. Frederick Douglass recounts not only his personal life experiences but also the experiences of his fellow slaves during the period. This book was aimed at abolitionists, so he makes a point to portray the slaves as actual living people, not the inhuman beings that they are treated as. In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, slaves are inhumanly represented by their owners and Frederick Douglass shines a positive light

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