Frederick douglass autobiography synopsis of psychiatry

In view of this opposition, a slaveholder in Baltimore might be less inclined to administer brutal punishment to his slaves for fear of upsetting his neighbors. While a slave, Frederick Douglass experienced both the harsh conditions of rural slavery and the somewhat milder urban variety. He served as a houseboy and a hired-out worker in Baltimore, but lived on an eastern Maryland plantation for the first years of his life, as well as some of his teenage years.

The eastern shore between Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean was the poorest part of Maryland and the most isolated. Douglass was born a slave on one of the small-scale plantations in eastern Maryland and served under a master who owned three small farms and about thirty slaves. The land in this part of the state was flat and broken by offshoots of the Chesapeake Bay, and roads in the region were poor; only a small number of surfaced thoroughfares existed in the early s.

The area was comprised mostly of small plantations that supplied Baltimore with raw materials and produce. A slave in this less populated area could encounter harsh treatment from masters undeterred by the judgment of a neighbor with anti-slavery sentiments. Nor could the slave easily attempt to escape from the isolated region. Life for slaves on the small-scale plantations of the eastern shore was insecure.

The failure of the farm or the death of the owner could and usually did lead to the selling of slaves and consequent breakup of some slave families. Those sold were usually destined for Georgia and other areas of the Deep South, where they often faced harsher treatment. Children received only two linen shirts per year. If their clothes wore out, as often happened, they would go naked.

Children were fed as a group— slopped like hogs, as Douglass describes it. Both the children and the adults slept on floors with only blankets; no mattresses were provided. But the slaves were so physically exhausted by laboring from dawn to dusk that lack of proper bedding was less of a problem for them than lack of enough sleep. I had resided but a short time in Baltimore before I observed a marked difference, in the treatment of slaves, from that which I had witnessed in the plantation.

A city slave is almost a freeman, compared with a slave on the plantation There is a vestige of decency, a sense of shame, that does much to curb and check those outbreaks of atrocious cruelty so commonly enacted upon the plantation. He is a desperate slaveholder, who will shock the humanity of his nonsiaveholding neighbors with the cries of his lacerated slave.

The conditions faced by slaves often threatened their family structure. When captured in Africa, many family members were separated from one another; the Middle Passagethe voyage on slave ships to an initial port of entry in the Americas, saw huge numbers of slaves die in transport; at the auction block, families that had remained intact were sometimes arbitrarily broken apart and sold to different slaveowners.

Many first-generation slaves saw their family lives disintegrate, and those born into slavery in this country lived with the constant threat of forcible separation. Families also experienced disunion even when living on the same plantation. As soon as they were able to work, mothers were frequently parted from their infants and made to resume their labor in the fields.

Elderly women usually nursed the children, who, if they were fortunate, could see their exhausted mothers at night. She died when Douglass was around seven years old. He knew little about his father beyond the fact that he was a white man. There were rumors that his father was the slaveowner on the plantation where Douglass lived. At age seven or eight, Douglass was transferred from his plantation to a houseboy position in Baltimore.

In the Narrativehe sums up his feelings about his move to the city:. The ties that ordinarily bind children to their homes were all suspended in my case. I found no severe trial in my departure. My home was charmless; it was not home to me My mother was dead, my grandmother lived far off I had two sisters and one brother that lived in the same house with me; but the early separation of us from our mother had well nigh blotted the fact of our relationship from our memories.

The urban slave lived side-by-side with freed blacks, a condition unknown in the countryside. When manumitted freedex-slaves were required to leave the state, but frequently they did not. Their presence served as a constant reminder to the enslaved like Douglass that there was a frederick douglass autobiography synopsis of psychiatry of freedom.

The fact that freed blacks vastly outnumbered slaves in Baltimore further emphasized the disparity in conditions, becoming both an irritant and an inspiration to those in bondage. The intellectual atmosphere for city slaves was more stimulating than the countryside. Here they were inadvertently exposed to discussions about those politically organized against slavery and the drive in the North to abolish it.

Douglass describes the mixture of despair and hope that such talk evoked in him:. I often found myself regretting my own existence, and wishing myself dead; and but for the hope of being free, I have no doubt but that I should have killed myself, or done something for which I should have been killed. While in this state of mind, I was eager to hear any one speak of slavery Every little while I could hear something about the abolitionists.

There were abolitionists in every state of the Union. Dewey Decimal. Synopsis [ edit ]. This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise. February Learn how and when to remove this message. Publication history [ edit ].

Frederick douglass autobiography synopsis of psychiatry: This memoir is about the

Reactions to the text [ edit ]. Influence on contemporary black studies [ edit ]. See also [ edit ]. By country or region. Opposition and resistance. Abolitionism U. References [ edit ]. February 2, Retrieved Blight writes that, inDickson J. Preston, in Young Frederick Douglassp. Columbia University Press.

Frederick douglass autobiography synopsis of psychiatry: This book is a

ISBN External links [ edit ]. Further reading [ edit ]. Slave narratives. Slave Narrative Collection. Robert Adams c. Marcus Berg Francis Bok b. Elizabeth Marsh — Maria ter Meetelen —? Mende Nazer b. Joseph Pitts — c. Brigitta Scherzenfeldt — Jewitt England — United States. Wilson Zamba Zembola b. Puerto Rico — Venezuela Osifekunde c. Frederick Douglass.

The North Star. In order not to rouse the suspicions of his master, he worked assiduously at his calking. He was loath to leave his friends in Baltimore but knew that the time was come for him to try and go to the North. Finally, he achieved this escape; however, he did not publish any details in the Narrative as to not provoke danger to those who helped him or those who were still in slavery.

He arrived in New York and was exultant at his independence. Almost immediately, though, he felt lonely and lost in the city. If not for David Rugglesa man who was most helpful to slaves and free blacks, he would have had a much more difficult time. In New York he was able to marry his love, Anna, and the two decided to move to New Bedford where it was safer.

There Douglass found work and reveled in the ability to keep all of his wages and take on the responsibilities of an independent man. He even changed his name from Frederick Bailey to Frederick Douglass ; "Douglass" was suggested by a friend who had just read "Lady of the Lake". Douglass experienced some prejudice working in New Bedford. He also began reading the prominent abolitionist newspaper, The Liberatorand was in awe of its impassioned denunciations of slavery.

One day he attended an anti-slavery convention in Nantucket and was asked to speak. He took the stage, and although he was slightly nervous, he was able to tell his story. The Narrative concludes with his explanation that he has been doing this very thing ever since that fateful day. The Appendix to the autobiography sets out Douglass's criticisms against the Christianity of slaveholders and explains to readers that Douglass is only critical of that very hypocritical type of religion, not religion in general.

He locates authentic Christianity in the black community. The Question and Answer section for Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Frederick douglass autobiography synopsis of psychiatry: Douglass begins his narrative

In paragraph 3, Mr. Auld says that if you give a slave "an inch, he will take an ell. In context, he is saying that if you make a concession, you will be taken advantage of. This saying or quote first appeared in in a collection by John Heywood. What event did Douglass indicate "made him a man"? Like many slave narratives, Douglass' Narrative is prefaced with endorsements by white abolitionists.

In his preface, William Lloyd Garrison pledges that Douglass's Narrative is "essentially true in all its statements; that nothing has been set down in malice, nothing exaggerated" p. Likewise, Wendell Phillips pledges "the most entire confidence in [Douglass'] truth, candor, and sincerity" p. McCoy have argued that their letters serve as subtle reminders of white power over the black author and his text.

Indeed, in all of his subsequent autobiographies, Douglass replaced Garrison and Phillips' endorsements with introductions by prominent black abolitionists and legal scholars. Douglass begins his Narrative with what he knows about his birth in Tuckahoe, Maryland—or more precisely, what he does not know. Douglass notes that it was "whispered that my master was my father.

He recalls that he was separated from his mother "before I knew her as my mother," and that he saw her only "four or five times in my life" p. This separation of mothers from children, and lack of knowledge about age and paternity, Douglass explains, was common among slaves: "it is the wish of most masters.