The Life Of Frederick Douglass s The Narrative Of The...

The topic of slavery in antebellum America was very mixed overall in the nation. Normally people in the North opposed slavery, while citizens of the South supported it. However, at the same time, many people were unconcerned with this heated topic and needed to be persuaded to join the fight against slavery. Northern citizens may have seen the practice slavery as neither good nor bad, but just part of Southern life going on for hundreds of years. Frederick Douglass, a slave who had escaped to the North, after years of abuse through slavery, knew that in order to stop slavery, he had to persuade all the people in the North to vehemently oppose it as much as he did himself. Through the â€Å"Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass†, which he†¦show more content†¦Today almost all children grow up knowing their parents. It is a crime to take children away from their parents under most circumstances. Returning back to slave times, taking the slave children away from th eir parents is dehumanizing to the parents and children, by taking away the most important away from their lives. Without any familial connections to anyone, Douglass had to fend for himself like a person thrown into the jungle and try his best to survive every day. Douglass uses these descriptions in his narrative to convey how slaves were ripped apart from their families. With each slave being evaluated as property rather than a human being, the slaves felt like a good rather than a person with a family, who would feel so much emotional pain when they have to leave their children, siblings, or spouse behind. Through the progression of dehumanization, the white slave-owners were able to keep their power over their slaves, who lost their dignity with each whip given. Douglass also puts the intense picture of dehumanization into the reader’s head when he writes about the whippings slaves suffered. A young boy, Douglass witnesses for the first time a slave getting whipped, He took her into the kitchen, and stripped her from neck to waist, leaving her neck, shoulders, and back entirely naked. He made her get upon the stool, and tied her hands to the hook (6). Douglass hides in a closet, thinking that he would be the next