Best Work for This Semester

Evrin Peavy

12-3-09

Humanities

 

 

Slavery Dehumanizing or Not

 

 

 

 

In Fredrick Douglass’s Narrative he uses contrasting images and animal imagery to show the dehumanization of slaves and slave owners. Throughout his writing he never says slavery is bad, or slavery should be abolished, instead Douglass shows and describes his own experiences through slavery to prove how slavery is dehumanizing.

            Douglass uses contrasting images to show how slavery dehumanizes Mr. Auld. By using opposite words close together, Douglass shows how Mrs. Auld transforms from an innocent motherly woman, to a empty hearted uncompassionate figure. Upon his arrival at the Auld house Douglass describes Mrs. Auld as “angelic” and “cheerful”. However, when Mrs. Auld becomes a slave owner her eyes become “red with rage” and Douglass describes her face as a “demon”. The contrasting images are used to describe the drastic deleterious impact of slavery upon Mrs. Auld’s personality.

            Douglass employs foreshadowing to show what will become of Mrs. Auld. After Douglass describes Mrs. Auld he includes a scene of Mrs. Hamilton who is another women slave owner, to show the sadistic beast Mrs. Auld will become. Douglass incorporates the scene of how Mrs. Hamilton would sit in her chair with her bloody cow skin in her hand, and would demonically whip her slaves when they walked by. By showing the effects of slavery upon Mrs. Hamilton, it foreshadows what will happen next to Mrs. Auld.

            Douglass uses animal imagery to prove the dehumanization of slaves. Through out Douglass’ writing he compares slaves to animals to describe the monstrous uncultured treatment of the slaves. In the scene where Fredrick needs to move to Baltimore because his Master Captain Anthony died, he compares the “men” slaves to “cattle” and the women and children slaves to “pigs”. Also in this scene Fredrick explains that the slaves are “ranked “ with the animals, meaning slaves were treated so atrocious that they were only as high as the animals. Douglass uses animal imagery to prove the dehumanization of the slaves to show that even animals were higher in the social class than slaves.

            Douglass went through slavery and was exposed to the effects of slavery. Douglass wrote a Narrative about his life describing how slavery dehumanizes slaves and slave owners. Through out Fredrick’s writing he uses animal imagery and contrasting images to prove the point of how slavery is dehumanizing without saying the words “ slavery is dehumanizing.”