The Eyes Of An American Slave - 1599 Words

In the eyes of an American slave, violence was just part of the everyday life. Violence is remembered through slave narratives; stories where former slaves would tell their hardships and struggles of surviving on the plantation. Slave narratives served as a function in providing a first-hand encounter of how slave life was like and how violence destroyed both the slave and the slaveholder. Frederick Douglass, born a slave, was exposed to inhumane violence as he witnessed the treatments of his family members and other slaves on the planation compared to whites. Douglass recognized that slavery was common during the time, but the lack of rights the slaves were granted did not justify. In The Narrative of Frederick Douglass, an American†¦show more content†¦Slave women were forced to comply with the sexual orders given, if they resisted, consequences were in forms of physical beatings. Violence was a willful effort in keeping African women in a state of hopelessness, depriving them of any feelings of control. The women had no choice but to obey, and after generations there were numerous â€Å"mulatto† offspring. At times, women slaves hoped that having sexual activity would increase the chances of having their children be liberated by the slave holder, but at the end, many mulatto kids were forced into slavery. The mulatto child symbolizes domination and vulnerability due to the fact that the white man and the black woman both held a meaning through their color of skin. The white man reflects domination for the reason that he has violently beaten slaves’ hence building fear in them, resulting in slaves to perform hard labor for they feared for their lives. As the color white symbolize pureness, slaveholder did not view objectification as a bad thing, on the contrary, they thought they were doing a good. White men mainly viewed African women as sexual objects that can be used whenever they felt like it, resulting in black women feeling meanin gless for they felt ‘dirty’ in the eyes of