Addiction to Domination
For over two hundred years, slavery engulfed America as one the largest economic opportunities. As soon as millions of Africans forcibly left their homeland for the new founded states, they immediately began their new lives controlled by their relentless owners. Not only did slavery corrupt the slaves, but also the slave owners. The idea of absolute power over others led to the longing of total dominance at all times. Fredrick Douglass’s narrative clearly depicts the perception of mental corruption as a tyrannical slave owner. As slave owners experienced a constant craving for power, they utilized a variety of evil schemes and actions to fulfill their desires.
Douglass’s first encounter with a slave owner’s violence occurred on Captain Anthony’s farm. He frequently found himself woken by the agonizing screams of his own aunt being brutally whipped for her wrongdoings. He describes Captain Anthony as ruthless, brutal and taking “great pleasure in whipping a slave” (Douglass 3). Captain Anthony reveled in the idea of complete dominance over his slaves. He lived under an overseer, named Mr. Plummer. The slaves living on the farms were not fully under his control, so he took advantage of every opportunity to feel powerful and domineering. In addition, Douglass also describes an encounter involving Aunt Hester seeing another man. Captain Anthony did not approve of this and exclaims “I’ll learn you how to disobey my orders!” (Douglass 4), then proceeded to whip her. Douglass hints towards the sexual tension between Anthony and Hester. Not only did he own her for work, but also to satisfy his sexual desires.
Additionally, the slave owners’ constant craving for a thriving business led to a constant craving fo...
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...hrough his master's joy from Caroline's childbearing. Subsequently, her birth to twins added to his work hand, increasing his wealth.
From Douglass’s narrative, we can conclude that slavery brings out the worst in slave owners. Although one human should not treat another in such tortuous ways, slave owners’ actions towards their slaves deemed socially acceptable among their community. Keeping other human beings as property presumed natural. Slave owners retained wealth from this economic opportunity, resulting in the most valuable possession of all—power. Eventually, the authority they possessed over other human beings led to their abuse of power. Their addiction to dominate diminished all traces of their morality, and unfortunately, transformed them into tyrants. Moreover, the curse of slavery created immoral beings out of even the most virtuous men and women.
During a period of time, the world lost its values due to ambition. Blacks were enslaved for being different. Races became a huge part of people’s everyday talk and to succeed, farmers and business owners had to make African Americans do their dirty work for them. During this period of time, people like Joe Starks from “The Eyes Were Watching God” and people like Frederick Douglass’s slavemasters became abundant in the world. The belief that they were superior to everyone else lead them to impose power in a way that even themselves could not tolerate. Even though “The Eyes Were Watching God” was written after slave abolition, Joe Starks and Douglass’s slavemasters have many characteristics in common and differences which are worthy to be noticed.
Douglass's Narrative brings an ugly era of American history to life as it weaves through his personal experiences with slavery, brutality, and escape. Most importantly Douglass reveals the real problem in slavery, which is the destructive nature of intolerance and the need for change. Douglass refers many times to the dehumanizing effects sla...
Unlike his peers, his perception of slavery is much more realistic and depressing due to his understanding of his plight situation. For instance, he states, “The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers […] I loathed them as being the meanest as well as the most wicked of men” (334). He is distressed by the hopeless position he is in and the “everlasting thinking of [his] condition tormented [him]” (334). Douglass talks about his seven-year experience under the Hughs. During those years, he accomplished the skill of reading and writing under his mistress’s care; however the short time of hope came to a very abrupt stop when his master advised her to cease the instructing. Douglass writes, “a kind and tender-hearted woman; and in the simplicity of her soul she commenced, when I first went to live with her, to treat me as she supposed one human being out to treat another […] she was a pious, warm, and tender-hearted woman” (332). He witnesses that that humanity does exist and that there are kind owners just like his; however, the circumstances shape them into the stern owners they
To understand the desperation of wanting to obtain freedom at any cost, it is necessary to take a look into what the conditions and lives were like of slaves. It is no secret that African-American slaves received cruel and inhumane treatment. Although she wrote of the horrific afflictions experienced by slaves, Linda Brent said, “No pen can give adequate description of the all-pervading corruption produced by slavery." The life of a slave was never a satisfactory one, but it all depended on the plantation that one lived on and the mast...
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave details the progression of a slave to a man, and thus, the formation of his identity. The narrative functions as a persuasive essay, written in the hopes that it would successfully lead to “hastening the glad day of deliverance to the millions of [his] brethren in bonds” (Douglass 331). As an institution, slavery endeavored to reduce the men, women, and children “in bonds” to a state less than human. The slave identity, according to the institution of slavery, was not to be that of a rational, self forming, equal human being, but rather, a human animal whose purpose is to work and obey the whims of their “master.” For these reasons, Douglass articulates a distinction between the terms ‘man’ and ‘slaves’ under the institution of slavery. In his narrative, Douglass describes the situations and conditions that portray the differences between the two terms. Douglass also depicts the progression he makes from internalizing the slaveholder viewpoints about what his identity should be to creating an identity of his own making. Thus, Douglass’ narrative depicts not simply a search for freedom, but also a search for himself through the abandonment of the slave/animal identity forced upon him by the institution of slavery.
Slavery in the eighteenth century was worst for African Americans. Observers of slaves suggested that slave characteristics like: clumsiness, untidiness, littleness, destructiveness, and inability to learn the white people were “better.” Despite white society's belief that slaves were nothing more than laborers when in fact they were a part of an elaborate and well defined social structure that gave them identity and sustained them in their silent protest.
Frederick Douglass had moved into a new mistresses home who had never known of slavery. While she had initially taught him to read, fed him well, and looked upon him like an equal human being, she eventually forbade him from reading and whipped him at her husband’s request. The kind woman he had known became inhumane and degrading because that was required to maintain the unwarranted power over slaves.
The controversies surrounding slavery have been established in many societies worldwide for centuries. In past generations, although slavery did exists and was tolerated, it was certainly very questionable,” ethically“. Today, the morality of such an act would not only be unimaginable, but would also be morally wrong. As things change over the course of history we seek to not only explain why things happen, but as well to understand why they do. For this reason, we will look further into how slavery has evolved throughout History in American society, as well as the impacts that it has had.
Holt asserts that slavery can “rescue [the barbarian] from the wrongs and miseries of barbarism” and make him “happier and better.” However, slaveowners treated their slaves like animals, serving to degrade slaves and making them miserable. In Douglass’ account, he recalls a valuation, in which slaveholders ranked the slaves and then divided them based on their apparent worth -- much like how a farmer sorts through his livestock. Douglass strengthens this comparison by describing how “men and women . . . were ranked with horses, sheep, and swine,” implying that the slaveholders saw the slaves as unthinking brutes. After this event, Douglass claims that the “brutalizing effects of slavery” became clear to him. Not only did the slaves face dehumanizing
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an 1845 autobiography by the eponymous author, is rife with conflict and contradiction. The wealth and cruelty of slave owners is contrasted with the poverty and helplessness of slaves; the ideal of freedom is set against the looming dread of its consequences; but some of the most polarizing and intense conflicts are internal and paradoxical in nature. Among these is the idea of hope, to which the slaves cling and the masters try to crush. Hope almost always carries a positive connotation, but Frederick Douglass’ narrative exposes its paradox in relation to slavery and freedom, how it was used as a tool to both help and harm.
Frederick Douglass is one of the most well-known, powerful, and talked about anti-slavery advocators of his time. In his book, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, he describes his journey as a slave in America in an attempt to show the people how unjust and unnatural the practice of slavery really is. Throughout his book he clearly points out the negative effects of slavery. When most people think about the negative aspects of slavery it is from the slave’s point of view. However, Frederick Douglass describes how slavery is harmful not only to slaves, but to slave owners as well. Slavery pushes the boundaries of slaves’ mental and physical states while also corrupting the moral state of
In Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, one of the major themes is how the institution of slavery has an effect on the moral health of the slaveholder. The power slaveholders have over their slaves is great, as well as corrupting. Douglass uses this theme to point out that the institution of slavery is bad for everyone involved, not just the slaves. Throughout the narrative, Douglass uses several of his former slaveholders as examples. Sophia Auld, once such a kind and caring woman, is transformed into a cruel and oppressive slave owner over the course of the narrative. Thomas Auld, also. Douglass ties this theme back to the main concern of authorial control. Although this is a personal account, it is also a tool of propaganda, and is used as such. Douglass’s intent is to convince readers that the system of slavery is horrible and damaging to all included, and thus should be abolished completely. Douglass makes it very clear in his examples how exactly the transformation occurs and how kind and moral people can become those who beat their slaves and pervert Christianity in an attempt to justify it.
Within the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave” Douglass discusses the deplorable conditions in which he and his fellow slaves suffered from. While on Colonel Lloyd’s plantation, slaves were given a “monthly allowance of eight pounds of pork and one bushel of corn” (Douglass 224). Their annual clothing rations weren’t any better; considering the type of field work they did, what little clothing they were given quickly deteriorated. The lack of food and clothing matched the terrible living conditions. After working on the field all day, with very little rest the night before, they must sleep on the hard uncomfortably cramped floor with only a single blanket as protection from the cold. Coupled with the overseer’s irresponsible and abusive use of power, it is astonishing how three to four hundred slaves did not rebel. Slave-owners recognized that in able to restrict and control slaves more than physical violence was needed. Therefore in able to mold slaves into the submissive and subservient property they desired, slave-owners manipulated them by twisting religion, instilling fear, breaking familial ties, making them dependent, providing them with an incorrect view of freedom, as well as refusing them education.
Douglass's narrative is, on one surface, intended to show the barbarity and injustice of slavery. However, the underlying argument is that freedom is not simply attained through a physical escape from forced labor, but through a mental liberation from the attitude created by Southern slavery. The slaves of the South were psychologically oppressed by the slaveholders' disrespect for a slave’s family and for their education, as well as by the slaves' acceptance of their own subordination. Additionally, the slaveholders were trapped by a mentality that allowed them to justify behavior towards human beings that would normally not be acceptable. In this manner, both slaveholder and slave are corrupted by slavery.
Frederick Douglass’ landmark narrative describes the dehumanization of African-American slaves, while simultaneously humanizing them through his moving prose. Douglass shows the dehumanization of slaves through depictions of violence, deindividuation, and the broken justice system. However, Douglass’ pursuit of an education, moving rhetoric, and critique of his own masters demonstrates to the reader that African-Americans are just as intelligent as white people, thus proving their humanity.