In chapter 6, Douglass says that people slaves and slaveholders are affected by slavery, I believe its true. Douglass had a new Mistress who had never owned a slave before she was married and didn't know what would come of it. She had the heart made of pure gold, she didn't care if a slave would look her in the face. Her mere presence had put the stingiest of slaves at most soothing. All she was to him at the beginning was genuine smiles and the sweet sounds of her voice.
Frederick Douglass, a former slave and famous abolitionist, wrote My Bondage and My Freedom in order to prove he was a slave before being an amazing orator and also to prove the power knowledge has when it is used precisely. Originally, Mrs. Auld thinks Douglass deserves to be able to read just like her son. Mrs. Auld later becomes “violent in her opposition” to Douglass’ reading because her husband puts her in “check” (Douglass 521). The author uses his words to appeal to the ethos of the audience by creating a seemingly kind and innocent perspective of Mrs. Auld and later completely reversing it.
Slavery was a cruel thing humans used to do in the past. Many slaves became famous abolitionists. One such slave is Frederick Douglass. Frederick Douglass wrote an autobiography to explain the horrors of slavery. This book was called The Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass.
The auto-biography “An American Slave” of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass is about the life of a life of a slave who eventually became free due to his advantage of education. Douglass discussed his experience of being born into slavery and escaping and becoming the symbol of strength and hero he is known as today. He, in detail, explains how contradicting the Constitution and the actual society in that time period were to each other. Douglass’ purpose of writing this novel was to not only tell his story but to also express his attitudes towards the “American Promise” and the “American Individual”. In the novel Douglass used similes, metaphors and imagery to convey his personal attitudes about the American Promise and the American Individual
Beginning in the 17th century, European settlers began using African Americans laborers as a cheaper source of work. In southern American colonies, slavery spread like wildfire. African American slaves worked on tobacco, rice, cotton and indigo plantations. Most slave owners forbid their slaves from learning to read and write, and typically did not treat them humanly.
Besides, Douglass has utilized the ironic tool in the paragraph of his essay. For instance, although he lived as a slave at the time of his learning process, he explains to the readers that he brought bread when doing one part of chores so he could exchange for a reading lesson from local children before his return. He acknowledges: "I felt much better off in this regard than many of the poor white children in our neighborhood" (Douglass 26), which is ironic because Douglass himself would probably be in a worse position. Moreover, this kind of irony also presented at the top of the essay, Douglass called himself a slave which reminded the audiences that slaves did not happen in some faraway land; it happened in America – the land of freedom that can also be the land of slavery. Additionally, it is hard to believe for the white American that in the mid-1880s, a black person could even learn to read and less write a book (Shmoop Editorial Team).
Douglass' audience for this work is those who want to know the cruelty of slavery. His audience was anyone who was interested in the topic. A majority of white men and women either didn't own slaves and wasn't able to see the cruel inhumane nature of the act or they were numb to it because black people were viewed as less than humans. If you remove the humanity from a person you become numb to any cruelty. Douglass' goal was to prove and show how slavery was inhumane and offered nothing but cons to the slaves and their masters.
Slavery had many faces but the underlying concept remained beneath each of these different faces. No matter how kindly a slave was treated by their master, they were still considered property and subhuman. While some owners beat and mutilated their slaves, others were more "kind" and treated their slaves humanely. Nonetheless, they still owned slaves and believed the slaves were property. Famous former slaves, such as Frederick Douglass, enlightened people as to how slaves were treated by their masters.
Douglass claimed that although slavery was abolished, blacks were living under a different kind of slavery after the Civil war. Discrimination and racism was prominent and there were few laws enforced. “So long as discriminatory laws ensured defacto white control over Southern blacks, then ‘slavery by yet another name’ persisted. ‘Slavery is not abolished,’ he contended, ‘until the black man has the ballot’ with which to defend his interests and freedom.” (Howard-Pitney 485).
Rushi Varatkar Mrs. Daniel Period 3 Due Date: 4/1/2024. Dehumanization of Slaves in The Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass. Back in the 1800’s, there lived a powerful slave who, not only knew how to write and read, not only fought against slavery, but wrote several novels on slavery, dehumanizing slaves and their enslavers. His name was Fredrick Douglass.
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.
Slavery in Douglass’s Narrative is portrayed as a destructive force which affects every aspect of life it touches. Despite being a slave, Douglass was able to acquire the enough knowledge that allowed him to consider his position as well as the positions of other slaves and slaveholders. From his point of view both slaves and slaveholders are devastated and utterly changed by slavery. He managed to give several examples on how the white slaveholders were morally and psychologically corrupted under this institution. Ironically, these white slaveholders refused the abolition of slaves despite being corrupted by slavery themselves.
“One who is a slaveholder at heart never recognizes a human being in a slave” (Angelina Grimke). This quote was created to show the effect that slavery had on not only the slave, but the slaveholder. The slaveholder would dehumanize the slave to the point where the human was no longer recognizable; instead, the slave was property. Throughout this autobiography, Frederick Douglass uses language to portray the similarities and differences between the two sides. He allows the reader to spend a day in the life of a slave to see the effects from it.
Some forms of slavery are not as obvious as other kinds of slavery. In Frederick Douglass’ The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, slavery is apparent and the slaves were well informed of their servitude. However, in Mary Shelley’s Brave New World the people in the World State were unknowingly enslaved by their leaders. The consciousness of slavery is the major difference between these two examples of slavery. On the other hand, there are many similarities between the slavery in these two books.
What common themes bond together the literary works of the 1800’s? Frederick Douglass and Kate Chopin both realized that people were not being treated fairly and thus it influenced their writing. Through personal experiences and observations Frederick Douglass conveyed how African Americans in My Bondage and My Freedom were treated unfairly. Kate Chopin used the plot to show how women were treated unfairly in “The Story of an Hour”. My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass tells of some of the experiences he went through as a slave.
