Topic > The Effects of Slavery on the Life of Frederick Douglass

All three of his accounts are very violent. In his story the slave becomes a symbol of suffering. As a child his mother was sold to another master. His father was a white slave owner. Everything that happened to his mother was out of his control. Douglass's birth was the result of rape and his death was the result of the suffering he went through. This example of a lifelong misfortune was followed by the tale of the brutal beating he suffered from his aunt. Douglass describes his master's inhumane actions and how he only stopped whipping him when he got tired ignoring his screams, "the louder she screamed, the harder he whipped (Douglass 354)." Douglass witnessed these horrific sights when he was very young. This has shaped this perception of the Black female in a negative light. Since she was a child it was thought that a slave knew nothing else in her life except suffering. Another terrifying tale that Douglass provides in his narrative is the story of Mary and Henrietta. It seems like each story is more gruesome than the last. Douglass writes of the horrible situation in great detail explaining how “of all the mutilated and emaciated creatures [he] ever looked upon, these two were the most so (371).” This example showed how dehumanized female slaves were. However, they were like goods, not like human beings. This situation also shows how harmful slavery was to white women too because it was the master's wife who whipped these two