Slavery in America essentially revolves around the master’s dependence upon derogatory and brutal violence to keep African American slaves in servitude, but this brings about a pivotal argument about the main tool for controlling their slaves. Every plantation in the country had rules that did not slaves to either read or write and because of this communication between the slaves was extremely limited. Ironically, this absence of regular literary skills remains one of the most significant ways slaves were kept in subjugation. This persistent ignorance completely voided any form of speaking and even if they the slaves wanted to rebel they don’t have the ability to express the means of doing so to one another. Illiteracy caused many slaves to
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He describes the climax of his fight against it, and when it finally took its toll. Douglass sadly admits it saying, "Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me. 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” (105)! Violence played a key role in the demoralization of many slaves across the south, and Frederick Douglass was one of them. There are multiple occasions in The Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave where Douglass vividly describes tales of physical abuse within the plantations and paints a clear picture of the slaveholder’s motive for doing it. Frederick illustrates when he says, “Mr. Severe was rightly named: he was a cruel man. I have seen him whip a woman, causing the blood to run half an hour at the time; and this, too, in the midst of her crying children, pleading for their mother’s release. He seemed to take pleasure in manifesting his fiendish barbarity” (57). Sometimes the slaveholder’s goal for abusing a slave isn’t to make out an example for the others slaves out of him/her, but to satisfy his own personal craving for
He describes the climax of his fight against it, and when it finally took its toll. Douglass sadly admits it saying, "Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me. 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” (105)! Violence played a key role in the demoralization of many slaves across the south, and Frederick Douglass was one of them. There are multiple occasions in The Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave where Douglass vividly describes tales of physical abuse within the plantations and paints a clear picture of the slaveholder’s motive for doing it. Frederick illustrates when he says, “Mr. Severe was rightly named: he was a cruel man. I have seen him whip a woman, causing the blood to run half an hour at the time; and this, too, in the midst of her crying children, pleading for their mother’s release. He seemed to take pleasure in manifesting his fiendish barbarity” (57). Sometimes the slaveholder’s goal for abusing a slave isn’t to make out an example for the others slaves out of him/her, but to satisfy his own personal craving for