Fredrick Douglass was born into slavery during sometime between 1817 and 1818. Like most slaves, he was unaware of his exact date of birth. A slave’s life consisted of being tirelessly overworked and exhausted. They received only small amounts of food throughout the day, often wearing the same clothes they were given as it was the only articles of clothing they received at all. Slaves often were not even afforded beds. Those who broke rules were regularly beaten or whipped. Sometimes even shot if the plantation overseers saw fit. Unfortunately, no slave was safe, even those who didn’t break rules were subject to these punishments. Douglass was passed along to many different masters throughout his time as a slave, therefore he was subjected …show more content…
Unfortunately, her husband ordered her to stop. Douglass was always baffled by Sophia’s kindness, having been scarcely shown anything of the sort in the past. With her husband’s influence, Sophia eventually gives over to the new mentality of being a slave owner and loses her natural kindliness. The corruption of owning a slave transforms Sophia, as she becomes calloused and mean spirited towards Douglass. Hugh believed that any sort of education made slaves unmanageable. By doing this, he unknowingly teaches Douglass about the power of education. “Whilst I was saddened by the thought of losing the aid of my kind mistress, I was gladdened by the invaluable instruction which, by the merest accident, I had gained from my master.” Through this rejection, he cultivated the drive to teach himself to read and write. As his learning expanded, Douglass became conscious of the evils of slavery and of the existence of the abolitionist movement. He knew that while his awareness of the world around him could bring incredible sorrow, it could also give him power over his enslavers who preferred he remained uneducated and in the dark. Though Sophia and Hugh Auld became crueler towards him, Douglass did not let his fire burn out, nor his desire to escape to the North …show more content…
Desensitizing people to the true nature of human beings and their treatment. “I have observed this in my experience of slavery, - that whenever my condition was improved, instead of its increasing my contentment, it only increased my desire to be free, and set me to thinking of plans to gain my freedom. I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is right; and he can be brought to that only when he ceased to be a man.” Thus is slavery the enemy of both the slave and the slaveholder. Slaves faced being separated from family and friends along with daily beatings and humiliations. They faced excruciating labor, along with extremes in temperature, illness, oppression, intense racism and much more abuse. Consequently, slaveowners fell prey to the corruption of humanity and exercised them without restraint. They were often violent, intolerant, ignorant, greedy and merciless. This newfound authority corrupted their nature on a great scale. Instead of allowing these conditions to break Fredrick Douglass, he became a force to be reckoned with. He used his life experience as a testament rather than a death certificate.
When Douglass would run errands he would do it fast and have extra time to have a reading lesson before returning back home. He use to take bread for those who knew how to read but would starve. In exchange for a lesson they would give bread. When he was sent to Edward Covey to be “broken,” Douglass took another step toward eventual freedom. When he was told to get up after trying again and again.
“Without a struggle, there can be no progress” (Fredrick Douglass). In the book The Narrative of The Life of Fredrick Douglass by Fredrick Douglass, Douglass, who was born into slavery, had to go through many different masters and obstacles before he became a free man. Douglass succeeded at escaping and freeing himself, while other slaves did not succeed for many reasons. First of all, one of the reasons why Fredrick Douglass succeeded in escaping was because he could read. Sophia Auld was teaching Fredrick Douglass how to read until her husband, Hugh, forbade her to continue.
Auld felt that it would make him unfit for slavery. At the beginning of the passage, he recalls being sent to live with one of his slave master’s relatives, Hugh Auld. Hugh’s wife begins to teach Douglass to read and write, but he forbade her saying that “it will make Douglass unfit for slavery.” Despite
As a young child, Frederick Douglass goes to live with a family and soon figures out that he will need to consider his options of how he will learn to read and write. The Mistress of the house was a very caring woman in the beginning, and was willing to teach Frederick to read, but that soon changed. When the Mistress’ behavior toward Frederick becomes more hostile toward his dreams of learning to read he comes up with a plan so he can hide the fact that he continued his learning. He figured out that he could trade the extra bread from the house to the under privileged white boys in his neighborhood in exchange for their help in learning how to read. He began to hear talks of abolition and reading about it in newspapers, and his became more curious to know what abolition was.
Frederick Douglass, social reformer, writer, and abolitionist, was born into slavery in Talbot County, Maryland. His exact birthday remains unknown, but believed to be born around 1818. His mother died when he was around the age of 10, after only seeing her a few times. At this young age, he was chosen to work in the home of a plantation owner, who is believed to be his father. At around the age of 12, he was sent to Baltimore to work for Hugh Auld.
Hugh restricted Douglass from figuring out how to peruse in light of the fact that he felt an educated slave was a perilous one. • Sophia Auld: The spouse of Hugh Auld. At to begin with, she was exceedingly kind to Douglass, yet owning slaves tainted her and in the long run drove her to regard him as minor
They were given leisure time and the owners would not appear cruel towards their slaves. The better treated the slaves were, the better the owners looked. He did not mind leaving the plantation because he did not have any family that he was leaving behind like most people did. Douglass keeps a positive attitude throughout the hardships because he believes that it could always be worse. At his new home, he is treated much differently than most slaves do.
Douglass encountered multiple harsh realities of being enslaved. For example, the ex-slave was practically starved to death by his masters on multiple occasions. In fact, “[He was] allowed less than a half of a bushel of corn-meal per week, and very little else... It was not enough for [him] to subsist upon... A great many times [he had] been nearly perishing with hunger” (pg 31).
In Frederick Douglass’s book, he writes accounts of his time in slavery and beyond. Throughout the book, Douglass writes about not only the physical hardships slaves endured, but the mental and emotional hardships as well. In Chapter X, Douglass describes a battle he had with a temporary slave owner named Mr. Covey. After the fight concludes, Douglass writes, “This battle with Mr. Covey was the turning point in my career as a slave. It rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a sense of my own manhood.
The Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass shows the imbalance of power between slaves and their masters. In his book, Douglass proves that slavery is a destructive force not only to the slaves, but also for the slaveholders. “Poison of the irresponsible power” that masters have upon their slaves that are dehumanizing and shameless, have changed the masters themselves and their morality(Douglass 39). This amount of power and control in contact with one man breaks the kindest heart and the purest thoughts turning the person evil and corrupt. Douglass uses flashbacks that illustrate the emotions that declare the negative effects of slavery.
This shows that the way a Master behaves around a slave can be very influential, and Douglass explains that he was compelled to give all his hard-earned money to Master Hugh because the influence the Master had on him was to give him everything he worked hard for. Next, on page 10 of his Narrative, Douglass proclaims, “They never knew when they were safe from punishment. They were frequently whipped when least deserving, and escaped whipping when most deserving it. Every thing depended upon the looks of the horses,
Furthermore, Education opened Douglass’s eyes to the reality of his injustice as a slave; thus, compelling him to action as he recalls, “In moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity. ”(Douglass, 2014, p.133) Education caused Douglass heartache. While attaining his education benefited Douglass, he could not relate to his fellow slaves. The fellow slaves had the ability to remain content with their current state of being since it was all they had ever known. Douglass knew otherwise and longed for the forbidden life as a free man, as it changed from an unattainable idea into an achievable
Through deep characterization, emotional appeal, and religion, Frederick Douglass shows the readers what negative effects slavery has on the slaveholders themselves. Douglass successfully shows that slavery makes the slaveholder bitter and brings ultimate sadness into their lives. In addressing the harmful effects of slavery on the slaveholders, he makes one reconsider their moral righteousness and better comprehend the difference between humanity and atrocity. Though there are many other ways that slavery could have been harmful to the slaveholder, Frederick Douglass has shown that these ways given were true and has proven that they were indeed negative effects on the
Fredrick Douglass is one of the most famous abolitionists the United States has ever seen. The events that led up to his freedom of slavery were very interesting. In his Narrative you not only get to see the worst of slavery, but you can also feel firsthand what Douglass went through to get his freedom. As we all know slavery was something you could not just walk out of. Some slaves that try to escape even end up getting punished or killed.
Because of this, he successfully creates a contrast between what the slave owners think of and treat the slaves and how they are. Douglass says that slave’s minds were “starved by their cruel masters”(Douglass, 48) and that “they had been shut up in mental darkness” (Douglass, 48) and through education, something that they were deprived of, Frederick Douglass is able to open their minds and allow them to flourish into the complex people that they are. By showing a willingness to learn to read and write, the slaves prove that they were much more than what was forced upon them by their masters.