How The Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass Dehumanize

Determining one 's place in society and the treatment they would undergo was based on the unpredictability of the skin color they were born into. Even before America was established, African Americans were always seen as an inferior race in comparison to white individuals. After being captured and forced into labor, slavery was then instituted and became the primary source of economic prosperity, especially in the antebellum South. Born a slave in the Talbot County, Maryland during the 19th Century, Frederick Douglass experiences the dehumanizing effects of slavery as an adolescence. Ostracized from his mother and unknowing to who his father is, he becomes insensitive to his family and focuses only on himself. Ordered by his master to live with another family, Douglass leaves everything behind and migrates to Baltimore where he receives a basic education from his new mistress, Mrs. Sophia Auld. …show more content…
Auld gets lectured by her husband, Hugh Auld, and is forbade to continue teaching Douglass. Overhearing the conversation Douglass learns that white dominance derives from the illiteracy of slaves making him more determined to learn and free himself from the chains of slavery. In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, he documents his journey to emancipate himself from his enslavement, and the inhumane acts he and other slaves encounter along the way. Hopeful that the North would provide him the freedom he is determined to pursue, Douglass attempts to escape slavery despite the fatal consequences of getting caught. Frederick Douglass pictures freedom as the ability to make individual choices without being restricted to gain knowledge about their own situations and alter one 's own