Essay On The Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass

The True Story of Slavery The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is a riveting story that shows how cruel and dehumanizing slavery truly is. Slavery was an issue for nearly all of the 70 years it plagued America. In this narrative Douglass brings to light the sickening experience that slavery is for slaves themselves. Douglass is able to communicate how terrible the institution of slavery is because of the physical abuse many masters forced the slaves to endure, the necessities that were not provided to them, and their treatment as something like cattle. Douglass learned very early that brutal physical abuse was synonymous with everyday plantation life. For nearly any reason, a supervisor or overseer could beat or whip a slave. Most of the times slaves were abused, it was done publically in order to set a precedent for punishment of other slaves. The theory was that when other slaves see their possible punishment,
If slaves were lucky, they were treated almost equal to cattle, but most of the time given even less food and other necessities. Slaves were required to work insanely long hours in the field, while coming home to a shack without any of the necessities of life. They were not provided with proper food, housing or clothing. Douglass recounts the minimal amount of food he received each month: “Eight pounds of pork, or its equivalent in fish, and one bushel of corn meal” (Douglass 9). This amount of food is not even enough to feed a sedentary person, let alone someone who has been toiling from sunrise to sunsets in the fields. The food the slaves were given essentially had no nutritional value. “Their yearly clothing consisted of two coarse linen shirts, one pair of linen trousers, like the shirts, one jacket, one pair of trousers for winter, made of coarse negro cloth, one pair of stockings, and one pair of shoes” (Douglass