What Is The Relationship Between Frederick Douglass And Power

Fredrick Douglass uses a range of syntax and figurative language to convey his journey toward

Although he was lucky enough to have a nice slave owner, he knew that many other slaves were not getting treated right from reading and learning from books he read. As Douglass learned more information about slaves and how slave owners treated the slaves, he began feeling sorrowful for all the slaves who were getting treated badly and started feeling that learning to read had been more of a curse than a blessing as said in this quote, “As I writhed under it, I would at times feel that learning how to read had been a curse rather than a blessing.” (Douglass,

By stating all these facts about what the slaves have to go through Douglass sends his audience through a whirlwind of emotions. He goes into explaining this and it starts to make the audience feel the pain that he and slaves had to go through. Slavery is not something that God intended to be a thing. “What, then remains to be argued. Is it that slavery is not divine; the God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken?”(Douglass). Slavery was created and thought up by and evil part of mankind. When Douglass states that God did not establish it, it's

Douglass talks about,

This is true happiness, excitement, and freedom expressed by Douglass in the form of his writing. He is victorious in this personal fight against the evil of slavery. This passage provides a turning point for Douglass as a character. It really stands out among the remainder of Douglass’ story as being “ultra-positive.”

While Douglass talks about slavery he mentions how he was born in the slavery era. Douglass states,” I lived on Philpot Street, Fell’s Point, Baltimore, and have watched from the wharves, the slave ships in the basin, anchored from the shore, with their cargoes of human flesh, waiting for favorable winds to waft them down the Chesapeake” (418). This is good because Douglass had experience living during slavery, so he knows what he’s talking about; on the other hand, had a person who had not experienced living during slavery; Thus, missing out on the senses and hardships a slave would have experienced, the paper would have lacked the ability to pull the reader in. Ultimately the result would have been loss in readers, because readers like to

Slaves’ future lives all depended on who would “win” them and buy them. For Douglass, it was unbearable to observe human beings cry in desperation and pain. Frederick’s mistress was the only person, besides himself, that was able to experience pure dismay; causing them to ache together and understand the terror.

His insight is dependably the way to his freedom without it he would not be free and offer the general population some assistance with understanding everything slave when to. Normally, we can see training, proficiency, and mindfulness as a Douglass' pathway to freedom. Just when Douglass comprehends who he is through instruction and matches it with the terrible way of bondage is he ready to set up the outlook of freedom. Douglass' mind fullness with himself licenses him to start the arrangement of working up a mental flexibility from the oppression of subjugation Douglass' of himself permits him to start the procedure of building up a mental liberation from the servitude of

Only when he witnessed the whipping of his Aunt Hester did he truly realize what true suffering really was. That event definitely desensitized Douglass to the dehumanization that slaves were subjected to. His personal introduction to affliction was when he was sent to work for Edward Covey. However, it was the time spent with Covey that Frederick learned to overcome suffering. Edward Covey was a poor man with a nasty reputation when it came to the treatment of slaves. “Slave owners give Covey their slaves for one year, during which he “breaks” the slaves while using them as free labor on his land.” (sparknotes.com). Frederick recalled his time spent with Covey as being the hardest time he had ever spent as a slave. Douglass was worked to exhaustion and weakened by Coveys harsh punishments. The more Frederick was dehumanized by Covey the more he lost his drive, desire to learn, and natural liveliness. Douglass even contemplated committing suicide or even killing Covey, but both thoughts terrified him beyond belief.

Douglass brings these points to light to show the contrast of how absurd the concept of slavery was. How a person out of the same mouth can agree that man is human and yet treat him like a slave; how can you agree that man is entitled to liberty, and yet beat man with a whip. Douglass was trying to prove the extreme level of hypocrisy within the heart of man that celebrated independence day while have a host of slaves under his control. In addition, Douglass is going through the process of eliminating every possible argument leading up to the argument where he compels his audience to think about the fact that if it is not any of the other arguments does this mean that slavery is divine, yet, he debunks this idea by stating, “That which is inhuman, cannot be divine!” (Douglass 315)

[he] understand[s] the pathway from slavery to freedom." (20). Without this understanding he may have been unhappy but he would have contented himself with the fact that it was his fate as a black man, to be a slave for the rest of his life. For the majority of slaves in Douglass's time, there were no kind mistresses to teach them how to read or write let alone a master who would unwittingly reveal the means to becoming free. It is for this reason that many slaves, cloaked in ignorance, were content in their situations and comforted themselves with false beliefs and

For a child not knowing the day that’s supposed to be the most joyous day of the year couldn’t of been very easy but those are just some of the things slaves were deprived of sadly. Douglass in his narrative includes many instances involving the cruelty and punishments of slaves not only taken place but how they had began to become institutionalized through things that are supposed to grant them freedom. He’s referring to things such as politics, religion, and social practices that were enabling people to have their way with slaves and treat them as if they weren’t human beings ( paragraph 3). Not being a child anymore and as naive Douglass began to understand the unfair treatment he and many other colored people in his community were being dealt with. Later he had increasingly began hearing the word “ abolitionist” around town and thoughts of running away and gaining freedom seemed to be the only thing on his mind( paragraph 3 ).

He discloses the slave owner’s ability to control all of the material that slaves were exposed to using an anecdote regarding slave’s only exposure to freedom; during the holiday season, slave masters give their slaves a taste of supposed freedom to make them believe that freedom is actually more oppressive than slavery itself. Douglass explains that they promoted drinking and recreational activities during the holidays “to disgust their slaves with freedom” (Douglass, 84-85). The anecdote is used to prove to the audience that slave owners had complete control of their slaves and exploited this power to manipulate the slaves. By promoting a false reality during their time off and creating a false image of freedom, slave masters were able to effectively control their slaves' impression of freedom, so that they would believe that slavery was the better option. Douglass uses irony to further this point. In addition to manipulating the slave’s perception of freedom, slave masters also prevented them from gaining an education, a quintessential factor in gaining freedom. Thomas Auld justified this by saying that knowledge would only make the slaves “discontented and unhappy” and vehemently stood against Douglass gaining an education (Cite). Douglass applies irony to the situation by stating that Auld’s lecture was what had driven

Next, the psychological trauma will be examined, in particular the valuation and division of slaves. Slaveholders deemed slaves as valuable assets such as clothes, furniture, pigs, and horses which was how slaves were sold and traded. By this method, slave masters would mentally engrain the message to slaves that they were not, indeed, human beings, but rather items of personal belongings. As a result, slaves did not know their self-worth. Another method of psychological distress would be to divide slaves from their families. In this effort, slaves were both stripped of both their morale and identity. The very first chapter of Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass proves this assertion.

Douglass’s narrative is a courageous work, as it confronts the slavery institution, and the misuse of Christianity by the slave owners