Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass Chapter 2 Analysis

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The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is a compelling narrative in which an accurate illustration of slavery is shown through an unfiltered lens. Douglass does not rely on over exaggerations to drive his story into the minds of the readers, instead he tells the stories just as they happened. Through his simple delivery, Douglass is able to portray slavery as a system of dehumanization that reaches into every aspect of a slave’s life. The outreach of a master’s powers forced slaves to live a constantly censored life. This can be seen from the songs slaves sing, to the conversations they have with other slaves. Finally, Douglass is able to show how slavery corrupted institutions like the church and the legal system. As Douglass shows in his narrative, a slave is dehumanized from an early age. The drive to increase profit through the exploitation of slaves can be seen best in chapter 2, “The children unable to work in the field had neither shoes, stockings,…show more content…
He makes it a point to show the hypocrisy of the church in the south. Most notable of these claims is in the appendix, where he discusses his belief in a “just” Christianity. As he says “I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this (slave holding) land.” By calling the Christianity of the south corrupt, Douglass hopes to shock the south into opening its eyes. He also draws attention to the unjust legal system through a story about his wife’s sixteen-year-old cousin. Mrs. Hick, a white woman, beat Douglass’ cousin to death with a wooden stick. She broke the young girls nose and breastbone, causing her to suffer for several hours before dying. Worst of all, Mrs. Hick faced no trail or punishment. The story, while personal to Douglass, was likely a common scenario in the
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