Frederick Douglas Response (Mmmk I Officially Hate Blogger!)

Did slavery affect everyone who is was around or was it only the whites? Did it affect those who weak mentally or even the strong? Did slavery affect everyone in the negative or was some of it positive? Fredrick Douglas conveyed how slavery had a negative effect on everyone including himself. One way he conveys this is through some figurative language such as simile. “Slavery proved as injurious to her as it was to me…Under its influence, the tender heart became stone, and the lamblike disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness.” (Paragraph 2). This conveys how the nicest person’s personality could be devoured under slavery’s influence. How since she was soft both inside and out, simply because lamb has wool, she was most likely to be devoured. How there was no room for softness in the cruel harshness of slavery. It also conveyed how slavery only had a negative effect, hence proved to be injurious. Injury is always harmful therefore making it a negative effect. Douglas conveys how nice she actually was before slavery begun to affect her. He explains twice in one sentence how tender and soft she was but also conveys how the negative effect was extreme how by also conveying twice in the sentence it had affected her harshly. But slavery not only affected the soft people but it also negatively affected the slaves.

Slavery negatively affected everyone it was around, one of its effects happen to fall on Frederick Douglas one of the sufferers of slavery. He conveys this through the diction in his passages. “The plan which I had adopted, and the one by which I was most successful, was that of making friends of little white boys whom I met in the street. As many of these as I could, I converted into teachers.” (Paragraph 4). This conveyed how the negative effect of slavery imposed on Douglas was that he ignorantly became racist himself. He called boys “little white boys” as if they were inferior to him or as if he did not want to be around him but the only reason he was, is because they could teach him something of value. He conveys how they were inferior to him, in his mindset, by how he says, through so many words, they were easily to manipulate. He could easily sway them into teaching him even though there would be many consequences to their actions. He also conveys how he was racist through when he calls the boys “these” instead of “them”. The word “these” conveys how they were just objects to him, objects that could be discarded like nothing. If he would have used the word “them” he would have made it seem as if they were people. It made him seem respectful something that he most likely lacked for them. Overall slavery affected everyone that it was around negatively; Fredrick Douglas only zoomed in on how it affected him and the mistress that once taught him.