Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass depicts many slave owners who torture their slaves, which reflects selfishness of white men in America during the eighteenth century. Douglass employs vivid metaphors to illustrate abusive imagery, characterizing the physical violence experienced by slaves during the Pre-Civil War period in America. He also exploits irony which reveals the violent atmosphere by exposing that religious slaveholders were worse than secular slaveholders. In addition, Douglass’ choice of words creates a dull tone with identifies with the attempts of slaveholders to keep their slaves ignorant of the world. Throughout the narrative, slaves face abuse as an outcome of their owner’s spite. Douglass conveys fierce metaphors which serve to illustrate the horrors of being a slave. He …show more content…
Douglass writes “I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason.” Douglass uses dull words to describe the ignorance to the world which slaveholders feel is necessary. Slaves were forbidden from learning to how read and write, for they would gain knowledge and try to escape, or revolt. For example, when Ms. Auld was caught teaching Frederick how to write, her husband says “Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world. Now,” said he, “if you teach that nigger how to read, there would be no keeping him. The ignorance that Douglass had to go through compares to the dehumanization of slaves.
Today, selfishness exists in many places such as companies, businesses, and even in the government. It is important to eliminate selfishness, or else something as bad as slavery can happen again. Greed and selfishness were the two main driving forces for the beginning and continuing of