Hypocrisy In The Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass was a prominent American abolitionist, author and orator. After escaping slavery, Douglass went on to become a world-renowned anti-slavery activist. His goal was to advocate for the equality and humanity of all African American slaves. Many of his writings highlight the many struggles or brutalities of slavery, a quest for freedom, and hypocrisies associated with Christianity. Hypocrisy is the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one 's own behavior does not conform. Specifically, in The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave Written by himself, Douglass emphasizes the lack of moral standards and hypocritical beliefs slaveholders held using examples of dehumanizing acts …show more content…
Frederick describes a time when he was "awakened by the dawn of the day by the most heart-rending shrieks," of an aunt (Douglass 21). The detail used to recount this memory depicts just how slavery limits or confines a slave. He writes that his aunt was "tied up to a joist, and whipped upon her naked back till she was literally covered in blood" (Douglass 17). It was evident that his aunt was being abused physically, mentally, and emotionally due to Douglass saying "no words, no tears, and no prayers, from his gory victim stemmed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose" (Douglass 17). This quote stresses that nothing could stop the beatings or help them escape the pain. The confinement abuse caused her to pray, cry, and speak words to try to cease the abuse. Without the details of how his aunt was positioned, or how the overseer would not stop beating her for any means, we would miss the great detail of how being a slave caused abuse to the mind, body, and …show more content…
One would need to understand his viewpoint on faith in order to realize why he felt as though the slaveholders were hypocrites. “Douglass first explicitly invokes the authority of an intervening God to support his own experience and his position on slavery when he describes, in strong prophetic tone, his sense of being "marked," of being called to resist slavery. His belief in providence not only allowed him to overcome but to step back from the more radical implications of his critique of slavery” (Carson 1992). The religious conviction was of great importance, for it brought to his thought and life what might be called a radical hope, a mysterious faith, and the loving guiding hand of the