Frederick Douglass Dehumanization Analysis

rest of world. Douglass did tremendously well at giving the reader examples that demonstrate precisely how this practice of dehumanizing slaves took place in the Pre-Civil War Era South. His descriptions may be graphic but they are necessary to get his topic across to his audience. The examples Douglass uses of dehumanization not only serve the purpose helping the reader to recognize sociocultural dynamics in that society, but also serve the purpose of perhaps brining awareness to the already sympathetic North into taking action against slavery.
Self- identity is when a person can recognize his or her own potential and qualities as an individual, which can be used as self-motivation to build up oneself, especially in relation to social context.
“When Hugh Auld discovered that his wife was teaching the slave to read. He burst out angrily that literacy would make Frederick “discontented” and “unmanageable” and so would forever unfit him to be a slave” (Douglass 231). Douglass sees that Auld had unintentionally uncovered the technique by which whites figure out how to keep blacks as slaves and by which blacks may free themselves. Douglass displays his own particular self-education as the essential means by which he can free himself, and as his most prominent device to work for the opportunity of all slaves. The capability to read provided Douglass a place of leadership between his fellow slaves. Acknowledging the benefit and the power of being able to read, made Douglass to start teaching the other slaves at Mr. Covey’s; he “I succeeded in creating in them a strong desire to learn how to read. This this desire soon sprang up in the others also” (10, 84). Despite the fact that Douglass himself picks up his
Douglass has no deceptions that learning consequently renders slaves free. Knowledge helps slaves to express the injustice of slavery to themselves as well as other people and helps them to perceive themselves as men instead of slaves. Frederick Douglass was passionate about educating himself so he went as far as convincing the school children to help him read. At the shipyard where he worked, he copied the scribbles of other workers to practice writing. He bought the Baltimore, as well as the Columbian Orator American. From reading newspapers, he not only enhanced his reading abilities but it also led him to the revealing of the existence of anti-slavery movements in the North. Many individuals believed slavery was a natural way of living. They thought that blacks were inherently unqualified to contribute to the civil society and should rather be kept as workers for slave masters. The narrative describes the approaches and