The story of Frederick Douglass informs readers of what life is like being a slave in the south. There were many things throughout my reading of this tragic story that I found hard to stomach. The beatings of the slaves to me were gruesome and unnecessary. At points throughout their descriptions I found them to be extremely explicit. For instance, the first beating that Douglass witnesses of his Aunt Hester by Mr.Plummer was the beginning of my stomach ache. Just reading and imagining what the slaves had to endure disgusted me. I think that the description of this beating for me was a little too vivid to imagine. Mr. Plummer really let Aunt Hester have it, he whipped the living day lights out of her. He strips her down and ties her hands up and takes out his cow hide and really lets loose on her. Could you imagine if you had to undergo a beating like this just for going out and attempting to forget about the lifestyle that you have to go through everyday? Granted that was the life of a slave to have to have no freedom whatsoever, but still the beatings were a little excessive. Poor Douglass runs and hides in a closet halfway through the beating because he can't stand to watch it anymore.
The other beating that pushed me over the edge was the beating of Douglass himself. He gets beat by Mr.Covey. Douglass had a hard time when he went to go get wood because he had never worked with oxen before. So when Mr.Covey finds out about his trouble he takes him back out to the woods cuts himself a new whip out of a gum-tree and rips off Douglass' clothes and begins beating Douglass. Again imagine being Douglass and never have been beaten before, could you deal with being beaten this way?
Moving on away from the beatings, there was another part of the story that I thought was a bit unsettling. I'm not sure whether anyone else in the class caught this but Mr.Covey buys a woman slave only for breeding. He hires her and hires a married black man to in layman's terms make babies and lots of them. Apparently Mr.Covey was short on cash and only had enough money to buy one slave so he must have figured that buying one woman and forcing her to create children was teh best thing to do in his position. For the ladies of the class, put yourself in this woman's shoes, how would you feel if you were bought just to give birth? This is just disgraceful to me. But you can see how much of an importance southern plantation owners put on their slaves. I wonder if her beat her as well if she didn't create a child that met the requirements that he had in mind.
Overall this was a good way to see the opposing side to the south during slave times. I found this story at times a little to full of description especially throughout the description of the beatings.
7 comments:
I felt the same way as you when reading the vivid descriptions of the beatings. You can almost feel your own back hurt. Douglass jumps almost immediately right into description of a couple of particularly violent beatings. I think he uses this to get the reader's attention, and, if this is "anti-slavery propaganda", as we discussed in class, it is a good way to set the tone for the rest of the narrative by immediately making the reader feel disgusted by the barbarism of slavery. Mel Gibson uses a similar technique in The Passion of Christ, graphically portraying the violence that Christ was subjected to in order to make the audience sympathetic with Jesus and disgusted with those that tortured and killed him. I think that Douglass is doing the same thing in his narrative.
I agree that the abuse and cruelty that Douglas describes were very graphic. But I wonder could they have been embellished? Douglas and possibly someone who helped him to write this narrative my have had the intention to create a taller tale. To help with the abolitionist movement they may have added details. These details could have provided the description necessary to make people feel extremely uneasy about the plight of Southern Slaves. Thus helping to promote their cause.
I definately had some of the same feelings as you. The beatings were horrifying. Hearing about them made me sad and I just felt so bad. The one where Douglass was actually beaten hit pretty hard. He didn't know what he was doing, but so much was expected of him. While reading I also remember the part about the slave being bought to breed. At the time of reading it it sounded awful, but now I'm putting more thought into and realize how cruel it actually is. It wasn't that smart of a move on the slave holders side anyways. A women isn't going to do her best work while being pregnant, then watching over the child.
I felt the same way you did while writing about Frederick Douglas and his life experiences as a slave. The descriptions of the beatings were almost too descriptive to me for the fact that I could almost feel them myself. When reading the parts about Douglas' description of his own beating, I found myself cringing and not wanting to read the following word because it was that graphic.
I think most people would agree that the beatings were hard to think about. And it is even harder to imagine being in his place. I think it would be hard to create a fictional story with the effectiveness of this one without experiencing some of these actual situations so I think although some of it may have come from others experiences I don't think he made it up out of thin air.
Colleen,
When reading Douglass’ narrative, I somehow missed the part about Mr. Covey buying a female slave merely for the purpose of being a breeder. Reading your post just made my disgust for slavery grow even more. I had heard before about how slave masters controlled when and with whom slaves could mate … I cannot imagine someone else having control over such things. And to make matters worse, if/when the woman became pregnant, the master had full control over what happened to the child; he could even sell the baby to another plantation master! This is absolutely one of the most degrading, and disheartening, facts about slavery, in my opinion.
I definitely could not believe the harsh beating that the slaves and especially Douglas received. When watching the story through Douglas’s perspective made me more sympathetic towards him as well and made it all the more difficult to read when he was being beaten until all he could do was sleep or rest. At times I agree that it was a little too graphic, but I feel that these scenes are necessary to Douglas’s narrative. They are the scenes in which bring you closer to Douglas and make you feel almost as if you yourself are receiving the beating. I also like the other point that you brought up about the slave being bought just to give birth. Under those conditions I would not even want to give birth to one child and subject them to that environment, let alone many. I would most likely be that slave that was beaten because she would not reproduce under those circumstances. I feel that this is a very valid point that you made and it definitely shows how drastic slavery was at this time.
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