Don't really have one Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Don't really have one - Essay Example All of this also happened to a man who is known to history as Frederick Douglass, the first black man to appear on a presidential ticket. In his early narrative Frederick Douglass: Life of an American Slave, the author details his early life and education in such a way that he illustrates both the dehumanizing effects of slavery as well as those factors that operated to inspire him to ‘become a man’ rather than remaining in the role of a slave. Douglass’s narrative begins with his earliest knowledge about himself, which is far less than most people’s knowledge and highlights the degree to which black people were considered beasts of the field. Douglass sadly informs the reader that he is uncertain of his age or the day he was born and, although his mother died when he was seven years old, he was relatively unaffected by the news as he had been separated from her since infancy. â€Å"Never having enjoyed, to any considerable extent, her soothing presence, her tender and watchful care, I received the tidings of [my mother’s] death with much the same emotions I should have probably felt at the death of a stranger† (Ch. 1). In highlighting this unnatural separation of mother and child, Douglass also points out that he never knew who his father was although there had been some rumors that he was a white man. However, the important element of these early chapters is the way in which the slave is creat ed from birth, separated from his family to destroy any natural human feelings of attachment and support and cruelly treated to keep him always in fear. By the time he was seven, he had learned of the death of his mother, watched his aunt brutally whipped and had taken his own place at work in the fields. He describes the life of the slave, illustrating its bestial level of survival existence and the types of behaviors they were expected to exhibit when they were in the presence of their masters. A turning point in the book