Fredrick Douglass is most like the report “Trapped in a Hellhole”, written by Stan Grossfeld about child labor in India. First, children were taken at a very young age and put to work as a ‘slave’, never to see their parents again. Fredrick Douglass was taken away from his Mother and reared on a different plantation. He say’s “My mother and I were separated . . . I never saw my mother” (2-3). Child labor in India is worked in a similarly manner as children are lured by men who falsely promise safety and education for the child to their parents. A boy named Laxmi said his father came to the factory to rescue him. He watched his father be beaten, and never saw him again. Another example can be proven in the beatings given for mishap among the workers. Fredrick Douglass speaks of Mr. Hopkins, a religious man who believed, “A mere look, word, or motion, mistake, accident, or want of power, are all matters for which a slave may be whipped at any time” (100). The children in India were treated in a similitude of the manner. Laxmi said, “If you got up, you’d be beaten,” while another boy of 9, named Udai Ram, was hit on the finger with a knife every time he made a mistake. However, in Fredrick’s case there was no law against slavery or ‘owning’ a slave as property. There is a law in India, though not enforced, prohibiting children younger than 14 from working. With this law, human rights workers can fight against child labor pertaining to the law given. In Fredrick Douglass’ time though, these fights for civil rights could not be justified by the law to protect them. Fredrick Douglass gave a true sense of what it means to be a slave and have no laws in place to help protect their rights for the future in becoming…
To talk about Douglass’s slave life with physical violence we can think about Covey. According to Douglass’s narrative, he was a farm renter and a poor man. He works sometimes as a trainer of slaves from the government two or three years without any charge (p.126). To tell about the bitterest dregs of slavery in his entire life, Douglass said, it was the slavery life staying six months with Covey. Shortest nights were too long for him and the longest day were too short for him. Covey made it possible to break down, both physically and spiritually. Douglass’s disposition to read was departed, his intellect was flagged, slavery of dark night covered to him and transformed to a brute (p.136). That is how Covey’s physical torture make a disaster…
As a slave himself, he understands from first-hand experience how badly slaves were treated. He mentions emotional and physical abuse he received from his slaveholder. He talked about how the slaves were not allowed to know how old they were or information that might expose them to more about their families. Douglass mentioned the fact that slaveholders would whip the slaves until bloody while making other slaves watch. Slaveholders would shoot and kill their slaves if they did not follow orders, Douglass…
According to the narrative of Frederick Douglass, during the 19th Century, the conditions slaves experienced were not only cruel, but inhumane. It is a common perception that “cruelty” refers to the physical violence and torture that slaves endure. However, in this passage, Douglass conveys the degrading treatment towards young slaves in the plantation, as if they were domesticated animals. The slaves were deprived of freedom and basic human rights. They were not only denied of racial equality, they weren’t even recognized as actual human beings.…
Frederick Douglass was as early as 12 when he was enslaved and separated from his family. His Master, (Master Hugh) was extremely strict with Douglass, but on the other hand, his Mistress was very lenient and offered every day to teach Douglass how to read and write. But over time, Douglass’s Mistress started to lean towards his Master’s rules, and started to become violent. His…
In the opening of the novel Douglass makes it clear to the reader that he is not sure of which the exact year he was born, because shortly after birth slaves are torn from their mothers, and given a blank life at a new location. Douglass was never allowed the nurturing and playfulness that most children receive in their early stages of life. "Never having enjoyed, to any considerable extent, her soothing presence, her tender and watchful care, I received the tidings of [my mother's] death with much the same emotions I should have probably felt at the death of a stranger" (Douglass). The separation from his mother that Douglass describes was done purposely ensure that Douglass did not develop familial feelings toward his mother. He shows the reader through vivid imagery of his experiences, how his innocence was stripped from him due to the cruelty of his several different masters. Douglass devotes large parts of his Narrative to explanations of how slaves are not born but rather made, and molded by their masters. He explains that slaves never get the chance to grow up on their on will, and become who they want to be, but they are rather a reflection of who their master wants them to be. If their master…
America was greatly affected by the dramatic difference between social statuses between slaves and their masters. In the memoir, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by himself, Douglass noticed how the practice of owning slaves could impact a person. After moving to Baltimore, Frederick Douglass met the family he would be working for, including his new mistress. Upon meeting her, he made note of how kind, soft, and earnest she was. However, not too long after Frederick Douglass began working for her, he noticed that “slavery soon proved its ability to divest her of these heavenly qualities.…
The Narrative of Frederick Douglass is a memoir of a former slave who is known now as an abolitionist. This autobiography takes place in Eastern Shore of Maryland; Baltimore; New York City; New Bedford, Massachusetts. Douglass serves his life on a plantation where life is not thought to be that difficult. Being a child, he serves in the household instead of in the fields. At a very young age he was given to Hugh Auld, who lived in Baltimore (Douglass 1845). In Baltimore, Douglass lives more freely. In general, city slave-owners are more aware of not making them look cruel when handling slave so that their neighbors would not think of them as evil. Sophia Auld, Hugh’s wife, has never owned slaves before, and therefore she is very nice to Douglass at first.…
In the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave written by, none other than himself, Frederick Douglass presents to the reader several instances in which the fellow slaves that he knew, a vast majority of them family and friends, were whipped nearly to death and were inflicted upon the most horrible crimes known to man. Through these stories from his past, the reader is shown how cruel and emotionally scarring to the individual slavery was and why it should never have happened. By the end of his narration, Douglass manages to express to the reader through his appeals to ethos, pathos, and logos, the need for slavery, as inhumane and unjust as it was, to come to an end.…
| Douglass doesn't talk about women very often, and when he does, he usually associates them with suffering. He makes a special point of describing the traumatic sight of female slaves being beaten and abused.Here Douglass is describing how when you take a slave away from their family it is just worse than death, and slaves are more afraid of being taken away from their family. It could happen in an instant, with no warning, and for no reason.…
Frederick Douglass’s life narrative provides a look in on slavery by someone who was directly affected. Because many masters believed that teaching their slaves to read and write, “would spoil the best nigger in the world,” (Douglass 5) not many slaves were able to write their story for the future to see. Douglass’s perspective is a once and a lifetime look into how slavery affected an intelligent slave who knew how to both read and write. Unfortunately for him Douglass’s growing understanding was a curse rather than a blessing. As his intellect expanded, his misery deepened as well and his lack of freedom began to bother him. Douglass shows his expanding sorrow, using tone, imagery and selection of detail. Through the these ten pages…
Douglass uses to this to show the how slaves are as valued as an animal is. This sense of dehumanization shows the slave owners mindset of only seeing a slave as property. This is seen when owners can buy or sell slaves without the worries of the families bonds that are being broken. Despite the hurt that the slaves endure from this they are forced to accept what happens through this process. Douglass shows this helplessness by this statement: “A single word from the white men was enough-against all our wishes, prayers, and entreaties-to sunder forever the dearest friends, dearest kindred and strongest ties known to human beings” (Douglass, 56). Although it takes a greatly dehumanized person to take part in this act of tearing apart family bonds without even thinking twice, the horrible reality about this is that it was condoned and legal according to the government, and masters, because it was a part of the southern way of…
The State of Virginia embodies the Founding Fathers, the American Revolution and the nation by symbolically demonstrating the beauty of the union. But similarly to the State of Virginia, the sense of American Nationality is flawed because of the institution of slavery. Using Jeffersonian rhetoric, abolitionist Fredrick Douglass’ “Heroic Slave” transforms white attitudes through his promotion for solidarity, activism and resistance.…
This narrative begins with the childhood of Frederick Douglass and ends with his adventures as an abolitionist. He gives insight into his personal recollections of his first awareness of what it meant to be a slave, from his own experiences and his experience as a witness to the brutality of one human being upon another human being. He allows readers through his words to have a front row seat to the world of slavery and the main objective of slavery supporters to dehumanize and oppress another race and culture. The goal of his prose is to raise awareness of the cruelty of man upon the backs of blacks, which subsequently he hoped would end…
Before Douglass realised he was willing to change, he had suffered from unconceivable cruelty in many occasions, which marked him and made him a slave. Slavery stole his humanity from the very first moment he was born. As it has been exposed before, he was separated from his mother at a very early age, causing Douglass to lose the familiar affection and closeness. Moreover, he was also a witness of the brutal abuse his aunt Hester suffered from their master. In addition, not only did he witness all the whippings, but he also suffered from countless whippings himself. The act of whipping was used both to punish the slaves and to show that the…