Narrative Of The Life An American Slave By Frederick Douglass
However the attitude of Americans towards the city and urban life has been changed over the years. In the 19th century people often compared the city with the countryside, and their perceptions varied depending on their origin. Black people saw the city as a place for better life, as opposed to the slavery in the country, white people admired the industrial progress on the one hand, but paid attention to pollution, illnesses and lack of space on the other.
In the 20th century main social issues and therefore the image of the city have also been changed from combating poverty and racism in 1930s - 1940s through the predominance of wealth and status and the emptiness of suburbia in 1950s - 1970s, culminating with phoniness, artificiality and …show more content…
We shall start with “Narrative of the Life of an American Slave” by Frederick Douglass. In this memoir the author views the countryside and the city as being almost completely opposite of each other, with the city as a place of enlightenment and hope while the countryside was a place of ignorance and despair where slave owners were able to hid the atrocities, they committed on their fellow man.
Frederick Douglass viewed the countryside not as a place to refresh and recharge as it has been popularly viewed as of late, but as a place of suffering where hypocritically religious slave owners are able to conceal the crimes against humanity they commit. The countryside was a place where slave-owners could break men into animals as, Mr. Covey does to Douglass in Chapter 10. Mother and children were separated to “to hinder the development of the child’s affection toward its mother, and to blunt and destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child” in this perversion of the nature. However, to Douglass what made this worse was the fact that Mr. Covey used his religion to justify his sub-human treatment of Douglass, as did most of the slave owners in the countryside. Slavery was an evil that corrupted everything it touched, and since it ran rampart in the countryside the countryside turned into a living hell for all enslaved
In the 20th century main social issues and therefore the image of the city have also been changed from combating poverty and racism in 1930s - 1940s through the predominance of wealth and status and the emptiness of suburbia in 1950s - 1970s, culminating with phoniness, artificiality and …show more content…
We shall start with “Narrative of the Life of an American Slave” by Frederick Douglass. In this memoir the author views the countryside and the city as being almost completely opposite of each other, with the city as a place of enlightenment and hope while the countryside was a place of ignorance and despair where slave owners were able to hid the atrocities, they committed on their fellow man.
Frederick Douglass viewed the countryside not as a place to refresh and recharge as it has been popularly viewed as of late, but as a place of suffering where hypocritically religious slave owners are able to conceal the crimes against humanity they commit. The countryside was a place where slave-owners could break men into animals as, Mr. Covey does to Douglass in Chapter 10. Mother and children were separated to “to hinder the development of the child’s affection toward its mother, and to blunt and destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child” in this perversion of the nature. However, to Douglass what made this worse was the fact that Mr. Covey used his religion to justify his sub-human treatment of Douglass, as did most of the slave owners in the countryside. Slavery was an evil that corrupted everything it touched, and since it ran rampart in the countryside the countryside turned into a living hell for all enslaved