Fredrick Douglass1
The brutality that slaves endured form their masters and from the institution of slavery caused slaves to be denied their god given rights. In the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,” Douglass has the ability to show the psychological battle between the white slave holders and their black slaves, which is shown by Douglass’ own intellectual struggles against his white slave holders. I will focus my attention on how education allowed Douglass to understand how slavery was wrong, and how the Americans saw the blacks as not equal, and only suitable for slave work. I will also contrast how Douglass’ view was very similar to that of the women in antebellum America, and the role that Christianity played in his life as a slave and then as a free man. The novel clearly displays the children’s animalistic behavior when they were not regularly allowanced. Douglass says, “Our food was coarse corn meal boiled, which was called mush. It was put into a large wooden tray or trough, and set down upon the ground. The children were then called, like so many pigs, and like so many pigs they would come and devour the mush; some with oyster-shells, others with pieces of shingle, some with naked hands, and none with spoons. He that a . . .
He knows what it is like to experience something of a good treatment, and he is educated enough to realize that it is something entirely different to be free. A want of information concerning my own was a source of unhappiness to me even during childhood. By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant. They seldom come nearer to it than planting-time, harvest-time, cherry-time, springtime, or fall-time. Douglass sums this up great when writing a letter to Mr. Thus the desire for freedom was exited by his understanding of the whole and its functions. His method was to work his slaves so hard that their spirit and aspirations were detached from them, seeming more like dreams than reality. My sufferings on this plantation seem now like a dream rather than a stern reality” (Douglass 73). When Douglass first got a taste of knowledge, he then understood the power in which it held. Douglass would cry out, “ … O, why was I born a man, of whom to make a brute! … Let me be Free! Is there any God?” (Douglass 74). My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!” (Douglass 73). Frederick Douglass salvages his human nature though education and self-determination.
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