The Dehumanization Of Slavery In A Runaway Slave By Frederick Douglas

Improved Essays
In his narrative, a runaway slave, Frederick Douglas, recounts his life as a slave and discloses the more heinous underside of slavery to a vast extent. Giving his former slave life as a testimony, he writes to inform the audiences about the cruel and dehumanizing behaviors of the slave owners toward the slaves. Among all brutality he has witnessed as a slave, he asserts his strong discontentment towards the exploitations of female slaves by their masters.
One evil wrongdoing that existed in the plantation, according to his narrative, is the practice of slave owners impregnating the female slaves. As the slave exportation from Africa had already been abolished in the turn of the century, the slave owners used this technique as a way of increasing

Related Documents

  • Superior Essays

    Through the use of different rhetorical devices, Frederick Douglass is able to achieve many different things. First, he is able to illustrate the true horrors of slavery for those who have never experienced it through the use of imagery. Second, he brings to life vivid characters and personalities by using both similes and metaphors. And finally, he illuminates a side of religion that is ignored in the context of slavery by using harsh juxtaposition in his writing. These three rhetorical devices not only add to the writing quality of the novel, but provide the reader with a deeper understanding, evoking many different emotions regarding the traumatizing experience of…

    • 1138 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    This is a narrative of a slave who freed himself. He went by the name of Frederick Douglass. The book was very brutal and intense. This gave great incite on what slavery was like on the plantation. It also covered what slaves as well as himself went through during slave days.…

    • 1390 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    During the life of Frederick Douglass, slavery was the foundation that supported Southern society. Its effects would eventually spread throughout the country, consuming the country socially, economically, and culturally. Social consequences of slavery included the reveal of class divisions among not only the slave owners but also all of white society. White women utilized slave ownership as a tool to elevate their position in a patriarchal society, yet also suffered the some of the greatest effects of slavery. Economically, slavery threatened lower class white population.…

    • 1232 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Myths of Slavery Rewrite In the famous narrative, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Douglass himself addresses the negativity and effects slavery. He elaborates this thought through the various terrors he experiences and explains throughout his life as a slave. Douglass’ main belief is that only through education can freedom for black society be obtained. Douglass’ determination to no longer live the life of an ignorant uneducated slave led to his conviction and utmost desire for liberation.…

    • 1163 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    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…

    • 1820 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    From that precise moment little Douglass understood that he himself was also a slave and the only wrong he had done was to be born black. In his book Douglass is showing how women are beatean treated for less than humans. They are being rapped or forced to bear children for their master so that the number of slaves can increase for the only profit of the master.…

    • 1337 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    The late motivational speaker and author, Wayne Dyer, once said, “freedom means you are unobstructed in living your life as you choose. Anything less is a form of slavery”. This is one of the ideas that is explored in Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Douglass tells the story of his life as a slave up until he escapes to New York City. He goes into such detail, that the reader feels as if he or she were at the scenes he describes so vividly.…

    • 1390 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Frederick Douglass was one of the most influential abolitionists of 19th century America. His main purpose in writing his narrative was to rebuke the romantic image of slavery in the antebellum south. For decades, southerners and northerners would create reasons for rationalizing the institution of slavery. Through his narrative, Douglass convinces Americans of the true conditions of slavery by including characters that contradict the romantic image of slavery, proving that slaves are intellectually capable, and explaining why slaves are disloyal. Douglass includes many figures from his early life in his narrative that portray an accurate depiction of the horrific life of a slave.…

    • 1072 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass the emancipated slave recalls his knowledge of the wife of Mr. Giles Hick who lived close to him and murdered his wife’s cousin. He talks about the slave girl’s failure to hear the crying of the mistress’ baby, and also explains the barbarities done to her with an oak stick by the fireplace, “... A young girl between fifteen and sixteen years of age, mangling her person in the most horrible manner, breaking her nose and breastbone with a stick, so that the poor girl expired in a few hours afterward... There was a warrant issued for her arrest, but never served”(Douglass 15). The black girl’s death was of no concern to any figures of authority in the 1800s.…

    • 1113 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Before the 13th amendment, Slave labor without a doubt transpires throughout history as one of the many attributes to receive mass attention when the idea of brutality comes to mind. Frederick Douglass, a former slave himself, goes through intentions to understand everyone’s oppression in the establishment of slave labor. Although the source of economy had to be based around cheap slave labor for a benefit of profit, the idea taken into consideration to also treat slaves terribly was sickening. Therefore, Douglass can absolutely claim that amongst many people involved with legal slave labor faced victimization through dehumanization, power imbalance, and corruption through advantages of oppression.…

    • 601 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Frederick Douglass employs three very important themes in his autobiography, all of which are effective at gaining the reader’s sympathy. One theme is his point that slavery is an impersonal system of dehumanization, in which slaves are treated like animals, plants, or even inanimate objects, but never like humans. He also shows how slavery corrupts the church and the legal system. White men are never subject to any legal ramifications if they hurt or even kill slaves. To help illustrate these themes, Douglass brings special attention to the slaves’ songs.…

    • 1011 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Frederick Douglass argues in his narrative that slavery dehumanizes both the slave and the slave master generating a dependency for each other. For slave’s, this dehumanization came in the form of having their name, culture and personal identity stripped away from them and for the slave master, the inability to function when deprived of slave assistance. In this essay, I will use Frederick Douglass’s narrative; along with, first-hand accounts to demonstrate how both the slave and the slave master became dehumanized through the institution of slavery. Using Frederick Douglass’s narrative, I will explain how slaves became exploited for cheap labor by the slave master creating a society depended on slaves.…

    • 1019 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Douglass’s narrative, he recounted the dreadful situation of Caroline, a slave that was owned by Mr. Covey. Caroline was used like a birth machine when Mr. Covey hired a married man to sleep with her every night. The result was when she gave birth, he would gain the number of his…

    • 759 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Bishnu Karki Prof. Dr. R. Pettengill HIST 1301 Sept 19, 2017 In My Bondage and My Freedom, Frederick Douglass argues that slavery was an institution that “victimized” everyone – slaves, slave holders, and non-slave holding whites alike. How can he make such a claim considering the brutality of slavery? In the book my bondage and freedom, Frederick Douglas argues that slavery was an institution that was very cruel and victimized everyone in the society including the slave, slave owner and even non-slave holder. Douglas argues boldly that slavery had affected everyone.…

    • 677 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The Slavery of Ignorance Slavery is the ability to allow ignorance to take away opportunity created by knowledge. This system has and will always be used against anyone that lacks education, keeping them in a state of unawareness. Fredrick Douglass is also an example, not of just slavery, but how gaining knowledge can overcome this system that is not just a physical state of the body. Slavery is also a condition of the mind, due to the inability to receive education. The life of Douglass is a perfect example of this point because he started out as an ignorant child slave with no hope of ever coming out of this wretched life, but he is unique with enlightenment at a young age realizing his fate could be overcome with knowledge.…

    • 1697 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays