Frederick Douglass Dehumanization

Frederick Douglass’ autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave offers a depiction of slavery like very few before him, from his firsthand accounts. Douglass wanted to show his opposition to slavery and knew he would meet many criticisms. Due to this criticism, he had to mask much of his work with irony. Some of his works are obvious and others are a bit harder to see. The more difficult ones were put in place by Douglass in order to provide a deep and profound statement, without arousing too much opposition. If he had he would have faced much more threats than he did. He not only

Slavery is a humongous topic involving both slaves and former slaves. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave Story is one such story. Douglass suffered punishments, and watching others get punished, he uses those experiences to make his argument against slavery.Douglass’ tone in the narrative is sarcastic and dark. Frederick Douglass successfully uses vast quantities of rhetorical devices, illuminating the horror and viciousness of slavery, including the need to eliminate it.

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass details the oppression Fredrick Douglass went through before his escape to freedom. In his narratives, Douglass offers the readers with fast hand information of the pain, brutality, and humiliation of the slaves. He points out the cruelty of this institution on both the perpetrator, and the victims. As a slave, Fredrick Douglass witnessed the brutalization of the blacks whose only crime was to be born of the wrong color. He narrates of the pain, suffering the slaves went through, and how he fought for his freedom through attaining education.

Frederick Douglass, the author of the Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass was a self-taught slave that was able to escape the brutality of slavery in the year of 1838. Frederick Douglass’s book is separated into 3 main sections, including, a beginning, middle, and end. The purpose of the narrative is to improve the audience's understanding of Douglass’s experience of being a slave, the horrible treatment slaves received, and how Douglass was able to overcome and escape slavery. All throughout the narrative, Douglass uses many rhetorical devices, including, diction, imagery, and syntax, which helps the audience understand, one of his main chapters, chapter 5. In this chapter Douglass implies that the overall purpose is to emphasize the animalistic, inhuman treatment slaves received, how Douglass felt about leaving Colonel Lloyd’s plantation, and his luck of being able to move to Mr. and Mrs. Auld's.

Spending more than two decades of his life as a slave, Frederick Douglass has lived through many hardships only one can imagine. In his autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, Douglass gives first hand insights of the brutality committed on slaves. The physical abuse was atrocious, but the mental and psychological abuse caused more pain for the African American victims. Drastic psychological separation was committed upon the slaves by their masters, and Douglass was able to capture it all, from the daily whippings to the unjustified murders. Douglass’s fight with Covey, the incident at Gardner’s shipyard, the unjustified murders, and many other violent assaults upon the slaves played major roles in the

The “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” is an autobiography in which Frederick Douglass reflects on his life as a slave in America. He writes this book as a free slave, in the North, while slavery was still running its course before the Civil War. Through his effective use of rhetorical strategies, Frederick Douglass argues against the institution of slavery by appealing to pathos and ethos, introducing multiple anecdotes, using satirical irony, and explaining the persuasive effects of slavery and reasoning behind keeping slaves uneducated.

The Dehumanization Process in the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave

Frederick Douglass: Slave Life Frederick Douglass compiled a book of series of events that he faced as a slave that became a book called, “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.” In factual detail, the text describes the events of his life and is one of the most influential pieces of literature to fuel the abolitionist movement of the early 19th century in the United States. Douglass describes how slaves faced the psychological and social problems while trying to deal with fear and pain as well. Slaves were dehumanized and were always in fear.

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is an autobiography that gives a personal perspective on the life of a slave laborer in the rural south. Douglass, a fighter against all odds, was an African American social reformer, writer, statesman, and most importantly abolitionist. Frederick Douglass afforded himself an education against his slave masters will, and was able to read and think. This opened up his thoughts about the evils of slavery and worthy motives for its abolishment. The original reason for his hatred of slavery was not only its effects of dehumanizing slaves, but their masters too. Throughout his autobiography, Douglass talks about the many ways a slave and master would be corrupted by the labor system that was so deeply

When Douglass was a young boy, he witnessed for the first time a slave getting whipped, Douglass's first encounter was of extreme cruelty that slaveholders can have. The slave receiving the whipping is Douglass' Aunt Hester. By witnessing this Douglass sees that slaves are treated no better than animals, they lived in continuous fear of being beaten if they did not behave. The issue of freedom is here as well. Do these animals have more freedom then themselves, it seems so. The slave owners dehumanized the slaves with the power of the whip, showing the horrors of traditional slavery and property they have over slaves.

In The Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass slaves are dehumanized in many different ways. In many ways the slaves are pushed to the point of breaking by their slaveholders and by their masters workers. They are wiped like animals would be and beaten to or almost death. Then the children are taken from their mothers right after birth and their mothers tend to be used as breeders. Sometimes their father can end up being the slave master.

People are not born racist, nor have the mentality to oppress others; rather, it is a mere social construct that causes people to eventually grow to hate, kill, and oppress others. In the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,” author Frederick Douglass argues that both slaves and slaveholders were once innocent people. However, as a result of the slave-ridden culture of the south, they were both caught in a perpetual cycle of dehumanization-- a cycle that still occurs in current society. Being dehumanized is to be deprived of one's own proof of their humanity and to be human is to have a strong moral capacity or the ability to express even the slightest of emotions and many more. In the biography Douglass argues that

Slaves were not treated like humans, they were treated like animals. Frederick Douglass was born a slave and died a free man. In The Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass, Frederick wrote about the systematic dehumanization that slaves experienced as a result of the conditions and the manner in which they were treated.

Imagine that a slave is released from bondage after he is enslaved his entire life. The values and cognition of a slave will undoubtedly be different from that of an average person who has never been exposed to slavery. Slavery has an impactful toll on those that are enslaved and treated so brutally. In the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass exhibits the repercussions of slavery. Slavery dehumanizes both slaves and their slave owners because of the abuse of power and injustice that slaveowners and slaves witness everyday.

In the narrative Douglass describes a scene where his Aunt Hester was taken into the kitchen where she had stripped her from neck to waist. This horrific scene happened due to Aunt Hester disobeying the master order by going out and had been found in company with Lloyd’s Ned. “I have often awakened at the dawn of the day by the most heart-rending shrieks of an own aunt of mine, whom he used to tie up to a joist, and whip upon her naked back till she was literally covered with blood” (1184). The slave owner felt enjoyment out of whipping Aunt Hester, he beats her to make her cry out but at the same time he beats her to make her suffer, he continues to beat her which eventually makes her become fatigue and not cry out anymore. Douglass wants his readers to feel grief for him and others, as they go through the slavery period when they had slave owners and how if they did not obey by the rules they will get killed or beat. “The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped longest. He would whip her to make her scream, and whip her to make her hush: and not until overcome by fatigue, would he cease to swing the blood-clotted cowskin” (1184). This to me was a very powerful scene in this narrative, this scene makes me and the readers have a lot of grief and sorrow for Douglass’s aunt and the other slaves. During, this time they experienced many tough