Frederick Douglass Dehumanization Analysis

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is an enticing tale of Douglas as he changes from slave to man. Near the beginning of the book, his first witness of a whipping reveals the entrance to the horrors that would come throughout his experience with enslavement. “No words, no tears, no prayers, from his gory victim…” (4) it displays the physical, emotional, and spiritual breaking of an individual; powerful words to create an understanding of the terror of slavery. Beating into absolute submission strikes a sense of sadness, pity, justice in the reader that encourages them to see slavery in a different light. Throughout his narrative he continues to attack these points to encourage similar feelings of pity and acknowledgement “to enlighten white readers about both the realities of slavery as an institution and the humanity of black people as individuals deserving of full human rights.”.

In addition to establishing himself as a credible narrator and using anecdotes with repetitive diction and imagery, Douglass also highlights how religion was enforced in slavery. Every slave owner that Douglass belonged to was hypocritical and deceival towards their faith. This is frequently used through all his anecdotes to persuade the reader that slavery is full of non-sense and that the “devoted, peaceful, just, and kind owners” were full of lies. “He seemed to think himself equal to deceiving the Almighty. He would make a short prayer in the morning, and a long prayer at night; and, strange as it may seem, few men would at times appear more devotional than he…

The Beasts of Slavery: Frederick Douglass and His Use of Animalistic Metaphors “The Interesting Narrative of Frederick Douglass,” chronicles Douglass’ journey from the shores of eastern Maryland as a slave to the freedom and fame he found in New Bedford, Massachusetts as an abolitionist. “The Interesting Narrative” provides readers with a powerful description of slavery as well as the historical, political, and social realm in which it operates. Douglass explores what the institution does in concrete terms to both slaves and slaveholders, but also the philosophic meaning of freedom. Through the description of daily conditions he faced while enslaved, Douglass makes his case. Douglass argues that enslaved must be dehumanised for the system

This passage from Frederick Douglass’ Narrative describes to the audience the characterization of the different slaveholders. The purpose of the passage is to highlight the different slaveholders in his community. Douglass uses a combination of characterization and emotional appeals in an attempt to evoke emotions out of his audience. In the first paragraph, Douglass characterizes Mr. William Freeland as an “educated southern gentleman.” He explains that Freeland is more just than any of his other masters.

Literacy is political, historical, and material, as it is defined “in terms of what it has meant to people over time and through specific contexts” (Edmondson 148). Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” are both bibliographical writings about the author’s experiences and perceptions about race and language. Through sharing their experiences, both authors display that the highly proficient usage of language promises social authority and influence.

Douglass demonstrates how religious hypocrisy morally bankrupts the white slave holders turning them into brutes in their supposedly superior social class. While at Coveys plantation, Douglass sees the religious hypocrisy of the slave holders. The slave holders set Covey above them as if his words and ideas are divine. They have a corrupt sense of morality, using religion as a base for their rules of slave holding

In the narrative “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave”, Frederick Douglass shows the religious irony in southern slaveholding culture. Douglass gives the reader personal accounts of how brutally some slaves were treated on the plantations. Douglass also contrast the differences between southern and northern slaveholding culture. In the appendix, Douglass argues that there a major differences between Christianity shown to us in the South and Christianity shown to us in the Bible. Douglass gives us personal insight to the life of a slave and their treatment.

In the year of 1800, Christianity was very prevalent among the times, and America’s dependence was on slavery. Frederick Douglass, one of the world’s best orators at the time, was a former slave that was primarily ignorant of most things, specifically religion as he questioned the exist and being of God regarding him and his people's situation in society. Eventually Frederick escaped slavery learning to become literate. With that came Fredrick’s ability to account for his situation in society, along with the morality of human beings and the divinity of this inanimate God. Overall Frederick Douglass came to accept catholic views, with his stances on, violence, poverty, and inequality.

What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? Throughout his sermon, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July, Fredrick Douglass devotedly argued that to the slave and even the liberated African American, the Fourth of July was nothing more than a holiday of a mockery of the crudest kind. Through his use of several rhetorical devices and strategies, Douglass conveyed his perspective on the concerning matter as if he were the voice of the still enslaved, both physically and logically. Prevalently, he presented an effectively argued point using ethos, logos, and pathos through credible appeals, convincing facts and statistics, and by successfully employing emotional appeals.

Fredric Douglass wrote, “What to the Slave is Fourth of July” in 1852. In this speech to the American public, Douglass states how great of a country American “was” and how great the forefathers “were”. In contrast to those statements he professes his reasoning for freeing slaves. However, Mary Rowlandson wrote, “A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson” in 1682. This captive narrative takes place during the King Philips war, and depicts how the native Americans treated their prisoners of war.