The extraordinary life of Frederick Douglass
The extraordinary life of Frederick Douglass
According to Plato the Soul is apart from the body. The soul cannot endure the pains of the body. As a slave endures physical harm their soul must not be affected. In the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass, once a slave is born or brought into slavery, they will stay a slave until death part them. As a slave one does not possess much since one has surrendered and devoted himself to pleasing their masters. That is why a slave must sustain their hardship and never render their soul or spirit.
At a young age Frederick Douglass, lost his mother. The woman who had brought him to life was still a stranger to him even at her death. When he was a slave he wasn't capable of recalling any dates, like all slaves they were kept uneducated and ignorant. In his narrative, Douglass described the cruelty that slave owners have imposed upon their own slaves as well as others. Douglass describes the monthly allowance of food, which consisted of " eight pounds of pork or its equivalent in fish, and a bushel of corn meal" (17). The slaves were given their clothing yearly and the children were barely clothe due to their lack of work in the field. The slaves owned nothing but their spirit; they were deprived of any happiness or abundance of food. Many of the slaves passed their days singing, in order to render their heart from pain. "Every testimony [in their singing] was a testimony against slavery and a prayer to God for deliverance from their chains" (19). Working in the fields was the hardest job a slave would endure apart from their punishments.
Douglass didn't experience that wickedness of slavery right away. Rather, Douglass' first job was with the Auld's, a family that treated him like a human. It was at this instant that Douglass' life would change for the better as well as the worse. At the Auld's he learned to alphabet, which persuaded him to continue his education although deprived from it. In learning the alphabet his mistress "had given me the inch, and no precautions would prevent him from taking it ell" (31). He realized education and knowledge was to his advantage, he was capable of reading newspapers and had "resolved to run away" (34).
Douglass had been one of the...