Cruelty In The Narrative Life Of Frederick Douglass

Back in the 1800s, one surprisingly common misconception about the institution of slavery was that it was a romantic establishment founded on goodness and happiness. White men entertained the beliefs that it was their duty to care for the inferior slave, and that this would make the aforementioned slave happier; however, this could not be farther from the truth. In Frederick Douglass 's book The Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave debunks the mythology of slavery. Douglass achieves this by exposing the hypocrisy of slavery-supporting Christianity, disproving the theory of black inferiority, and dispelling the idea that blacks are happy as slaves. Many slaveholders justified their cruelty by referencing the Bible. For example, …show more content…
Slaveholders often enjoyed portraying themselves as benevolent masters, without whom the slaves beneath them would be lost and scared. Such images were perpetuated by slaves themselves, who were intimidated into lying about how good their masters treated them. However, this lie dissolves when confronted with a black person 's impressive capacity for intelligence, as demonstrated by Douglass when he writes his Narrative. William Lloyd Garrison himself testifies to the fact that Douglass is the author of this work, when he says that "Mr. Douglass has very properly chosen to write his own Narrative, in his own style, and according to the best of his ability, rather than to employ some one else" (ix-x). This statement implies that there are many readers who would not believe that a black man was capable of writing such a sophisticated narrative, when, in fact, Frederick Douglass was more than capable of producing a literary masterpiece. From the very first page, Douglass utilizes highly developed vocabulary and complex sentence structures that betray his striking intelligence. It was Mrs. Auld who first introduced Douglass to the alphabet, and ignited a flame within him that drove him to learn to write. Mr. Auld feared that slaves would gain from literacy a motivation to escape, and from this point onward, Douglass believed that knowledge was the swiftest route to freedom. Indeed, …show more content…
Douglass relates to his audience that he was "utterly astonished" to find that people in the North spoke of "singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment and happiness" when, in fact, it "is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake" (12). Douglass asserts that slaves "sing when they are most unhappy" (12). This helps to disprove the image of slaves singing happily as they work in the fields, replaced instead with the harsh reality of the heartbroken slave singing a mournful tune. Yet another misconception is that a slave 's loyalty to his master is a sign of his contentment in slavery. Slaves are constantly living in fear of the possibility that any man they talk to could be their master in disguise, keen on catching the slave in the act of telling bad things about the master. Then, if the master happens to catch a slave in such an act, that slave will be punished. Douglass states that "the penalty of telling...the simple truth" about the master 's cruelty is to be forever sundered from one 's friends and family, and that it "is partly in consequence of such facts, that slaves...almost universally say they are contented, and that their masters are kind" (15-16). This gives off the illusion that slaves are content with their lives, when in reality, they could hardly be more oppressed or downtrodden. They gradually became less loyal to each other, and more loyal to their masters. Yet another