Frederick Douglas
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When Frederick Douglas wrote his slave narrative in 1845 it was in an effort to bring home to readers all over the United States the very personal meaning slavery and subjugation had not only for him, but also for thousands of people enslaved and subjugated in the southern United States at that time. While the "peculiar" institution of slavery was ended in 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation, his slave narrative illustrates several types of indirect enslavement then as well as now. This paper will demonstrate that enslavement still occurs in current society and show how and where it exists. Three of these types of enslavement include: ignorance, partial knowledge or knowledge without knowing how to act or react, and subjugating morals and ethics in favor of business or government practices. Ignorance, or not having knowledge, in this case not being educated or able to read, is the first type of enslavement that Douglass discussed in 1845 that also occurs now. As Jacobus points out, teaching slaves to read was both unlawful and considered "unsafe" as a slave might then get dangerous ideas about freedom (125). Mr. Auld, Douglass' slave master, is quick to point out to his wife that a slave "should know nothing but to obey his master-to do as he is told to do" (128). The slave master's reasoning is that learning to read and obtaining knowledge would not only make him unfit for slavish manual labor, but also make the slave "discontented and unhappy" (128). In other wor
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Approximate Word count = 897
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page)
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