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Narrative of Frederick Douglas, American Slave
Numerous authors have written accounts of the horrors of slavery. Some of the most convincing of these accounts were written by actual slaves themselves, a fact which is readily underscored by an analysis of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. However, there is a principle point of distinction between Douglass' work and that of other accounts of the iniquities of slavery, which predominantly include the intense physical horrors the institution of chattel slavery produced during the formative years of the United States. Many accountings of slavery detail the lascivious and rapacious behavior of masters and unspeakable acts of physical cruelty that typified this lucrative practice. However, there were also a number of psychological and mental horrors produced by slavery, the effects of which are perhaps more lasting and profound than those of the former. An analysis of several key scenes in the aforementioned text reveals the nature of these horrors, and implies the full extent of the damage that slave masters inflicted upon slaves.
Perhaps the most devastating horror that slavery engendered was the propensity to turn peoples of African descent against one another while siding with their oppressor, the slave master, as opposed to siding with their peers, other slaves. This perversity is demonstrated quite clearly during a point in Douglass' narrative in which he is engaged in a...
The pair were fighting on Covey's property when another slave, Hughes, intervened on the behalf of Covey -- a man who had tortured, brutalized, and likely raped any number of his slaves while ruthlessly working them without remuneration. Of this incident Douglass writes, "Hughes came, and, while Covey held me, attempted to tie my right hand. While he was in the act of doing so, I watched my chance, and gave him a heavy kick close under the ribs" (Douglass, 1845, p. 62). The ethos of this scene is particularly disturbing, and typical of the perverse nature that slavery produced. In this passage Douglass commits an act of violence against another African-American slave, which would appear contradictory to the course of action to overcoming the ills of slavery. However, he was forced to take this action because that slave (who was equally oppressed and abused by the same oppressor of Douglass and every other slave working for Covey) would rather help his oppressor than a fellow slave. There is a genuine perversity in such behavior on the part of Hughes that illustrates the totality of Covey's dominance and triumph over the former that accounts for the ethos of this passage; Douglass employs such ethos to indicate the extent of the mental effects of slavery and illustrate the horrors it created.
Another one of the most horrific aspects of slavery was…
References
Douglass, F. (1845). Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. Retrieved from http://www.ibiblio.org/ebooks/Douglass/Narrative/Douglass_Narrative.pdf
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With this, Douglass can securely make the claim that slaves are, in fact, human. He does so with conviction, and aims to persuade his predominately white audience that they are capable of harboring reason and complex emotions, like the readers themselves. "The white children could tell their ages. I could not tell why I ought to be deprived of the same privilege," (Douglass 47). Slavery psychologically impacted individuals -- it completely