Frederick Douglass

Final Essay

"Slavery is no scholar, no improver; it does not love the whistle of the railroad; it does not love the newspaper, the mail-bag, a college, a book or a preacher who has the absurd whim of saying what he thinks; it does not increase the white population; it does not improve the soil; everything goes to decay." This claim from Ralph Waldo Emerson is an epitome of what was slavery like. Many slaves from 1600~1860s suffered severely and many wrote their own narratives to support the idea of abolition of slaves. Two of them are Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass and The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano by Olaudah Equiano. Frederick Douglass and Olaudah Equiano used many emotional motifs in their narratives to convince people to support the abolitionist movement. They are trying to persuade the readers to support the abolition of slavery by using the word "brute" repetitively to form the image that slaves were dehumanized, were treated worse than animal, and were kept illiterate.

Slaves were nothing but beasts to the slave holders and they were dehumanized every day. Douglass states, “I was broken in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, and the disposition to read departed, … , the dark night of slavery closed in upon me;" (Douglass 73) Douglass makes it clear that slavery degrades a man, and makes him loose his manhood. Many slaves are hurt mentally as well as physically and that could affect them forever. They are ashamed of their status. Douglass was so ashamed to work every day like beasts and to be whipped if he was slacking for a little bit. Slave holders also thought the women slaves were nothing but the "breeders." One of the slave owners named Mr. Covey bought the women slaves and made them have sex with other men slaves until they give birth to babies because they become slaves when they grow which brings the money for him. Douglass tells us, "These facts in the case are these: Mr. Covey was a poor man; he was just commencing in life; he was only able to buy one slave; and shocking, as is the fact, he bought her, as he said for a breeder." (Douglass 58) Douglass uses parallelism here by repeating "he" in the beginning of the sentence to tell us and emphasize what Mr. Covey did to the women slaves. This is just a horrible thing that humans can do. They don't think about other humans' feelings, but more about animals. They don't do or say anything to their wives. Black women are nothing different from their white wives. They should be treated equally as white women. As educated men, they should honor and think of morality of the slaves.

Not only the slaves were dehumanized by slave holders, they were also treated worse than animals. Slaves were treated as their owners’ properties. Slaves frequently are passed