How Slavery Is Dehumanized

Slavery was not only a racial issue in the 1800s, but was also an act of dehumanization for no logical reason. Dehumanizing slaves was shown throughout The Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass in many different ways. The slaves were worked, beat, and whipped for what seemed to be no reason at all. This novel, written by Frederick Douglass himself, shares what it was like to be born into slavery, the challenges, work, and much more. Growing up as a slave, Frederick witnessed awful things, like the bloody, terrifying beating of his Aunt Hester. Frederick was dehumanized his whole slave life, starting when he was just a baby. Like most kids born into slavery, Frederick was taken from his mother before reaching twelve months of age. Frederick only saw his mother a few times, which was when she would walk twelve miles at night just to visit him. “I never saw my mother, to know her as such, more than four or five times in my life; and each of these times was very short in duration, and at night” (Douglass I). He did not know her well enough to feel any emotion towards her. He had never met his
They were given scraps and had to eat out of a trough as a pig would. “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” (Douglass V). The monthly food allowance was eight pounds of pork, or the equivalent in fish and one bushel of corn meal. Kids were given very few clothes or walked around naked. The yearly clothing allowance for adult slaves was two coarse linen shirts, one pair of linen trousers, one jacket and trousers for the winter, and one pair of socks and shoes. As you can see, slaves had a very limited amount of necessities. As Frederick got older, he was given a job at a shipyard where he was paid, but he had to hand over all his earned money to his master. This was