We Don't Know The Half Of It

In reading about Frederick Douglas, I was very impressed by his writings and accounts of his life. It was a very easy and educational read. It kept my attention span at a high level. The situations he wrote of were real life situations and were educational. They showed that slavery was not just words but were a forced way of life. A hellish nightmare lived everyday by the people involved. It was very different from the dull mostly fictional readings of Candide and Gulliver's Travels. Douglass readings were presented in an on edge, educational way. Fredick Douglass accomplished much, He was an overcomer. This was very hard times for the black community but Douglass was able to achieve much. His writings gained world recognition and he became the most exciting, electrifing speaker and writer produced by black america in the ninneteeth century. We sometimes here stories of slavery and just blow them off as just words and are guility of not realizing the realism of those truths. Douglass tells of his life accounts in a way that helps me to better understand the real meaning of slavery. We make the mistake of not putting ourselves in the shoes of the slaves and the terrible hardships they indured. To the people of slavery it was very real and was a forced everyday lifestyle and nightmare from hell. Douglass tells of one such incident where a slaveowners overseer was involved. Mr. Plummer, the overseerer, was a drunken evil man. He swore nearly every breath and seemed to enjoy cruelity and inducing much pain on the slaves. Douglass describes him as a savage monster who the slave owner even had issues with. The owner would even become enraged at his needless cruelity.Douglass tells about being awakened at dawn by shrieks and screams of his aunt. "No words, no tears, no prayers, from his goery victim, seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose. The louder she scremed, the harder he whipped;and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped longest" (Douglass 925). A needless punishment for a female longing for the attention of a young male. Hardly a crime and definitely not worthy of a beating.