Summary Of Frederick Douglass Dehumanization

The institution of slavery not only brutalizes its victims, but also dehumanizes the practitioners of it. Slavery had warped and twisted the very essence of every person it encountered, from the slaves being subjected to the cruelty and sadism of their masters, to the masters themselves losing their very humanity to such barbaric degrees, some of whom even being previously persons of reputable morality. The Classic slave Narratives provides numerous examples of this, many of which being within the Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, and The History of Mary Prince.

The Narrative of Frederick Douglass is filled with these examples of brutalization of both slave and master. During Douglass’s stay in Baltimore with Mr. and Mrs. Auld he

Douglass himself described his mistress as, “a woman of the kindest heart and finest feelings. She had never had a slave under her control previously to myself” (363). Douglass continues to describe how kind and nice she was unlike like his previous owners. Notice how Douglass emphasizes that she had no previous owner, this is because her demeanor will change as she begins to grow accustomed to owning a slave. Douglass writes about how she taught him the alphabet and even how to spell until her husband forbade it. Douglass he writes, “She finally became even more violent to the opposition than her husband himself…she seemed anxious to do better” (367). Douglass does not only use his mistress Mrs. Auld as his sole example of the dehumanizing effects of slavery, he also describes himself as a victim of this. When Douglass write about his time with his with his new master Mr. Covey he begins to go into detail on how Mr. Covey not only abused greatly abused of him physically but also stripped of his “intellect”. Douglass wrote, “I was broken in body, soul and spirit. My natural elasticity crushed, my intellect

The author of the supplement portion of The History of Mary prince says, “If the very best and mildest of your slave owners can act as Mr. Wood is proved to have acted… And what else than colonial slavery possible be, even in its best state, but a system of incurable evil and iniquitous” (309). The editor is trying to convey that the whole institution of slavery is full of evil and cruelty if even the kind or mild slaver owners can behave as Mr. Wood has toward Mary. Surely this many people could not possibly have had an innate sense of cruelty and violence toward others, therefore it must have be fostered by the very institution of slavery itself. Within the supplement the author also includes his own personal accounts of the barbarity of slavery as he lived in areas of colonial slavery and had this to say about, “I woke up one morning by dismal cries, and while looking out the window, I saw a black girl around fourteen years old; before her stood her mistress, a white woman with a large black stick in her hand… and every fierce and malevolent passion was depicted on her face” (314). Any human harboring such hatred and cruelty cannot possibly be described but in any other way than dehumanized, as nothing but sadism and cruelty remain within them. And this is no mere isolated incident, as the author tells of the numerous cries of slaves during his stay in Brazil. While