“Her arms were stretched up at their full length, so that she stood upon the ends of her toes. He then said to her, “Now, you d – d b – h, I’ll learn you how to disobey my orders!” and after rolling up his sleeves, he commenced to lay on the heavy cowskin, and soon the warm, red blood (amid heart rending shrieks from her, and horrid oaths from him) came dripping to the floor. I was so terrified and horror-stricken at the sight, that I hid myself in a closet, and dared not venture out till long after the bloody transaction was over. I expected it would be my turn next. It was all new to me. I had never seen anything like it before. I had always lived with my grand-mother on the outskirts of the plantation, where she was put to raise the children of the younger women. I had therefore been, until now, out of the way of the bloody scenes that often occurred on the plantation. “(P.239)

The above passage provides a thorough and genuine description into Douglass’s memory of his aunt’s painful condition under the barbaric torture of her master. The story left me deeply intrigued as Douglass was able to provoke nuanced emotions of his readers through his adept literary style. “And soon the warm, red blood came dripping to the floor” creates a frightening sentiment. Following the terrifying moments came a feeling of angriness that arose by the cruelty of the master to his slave. Not only did he strip her “from neck to waist” and call her “you d – d, b – h,” the master completely lost his humane side in a sense that he did so in front the eyes of an innocent child. In a very short passage, Douglass successfully employs a streak of descriptive adjectives (“dripping,” “terrified,” horror-stricken”) to describe his astonishment before such a petrifying scene. Through this vivid yet horrifying memory of Douglass, the audiences, besides undergoing multiple levels of emotions, gain better insights of how the American slavery system in the 19th century works. There was hardly any existence of human relationship between slaveholders and slaves. Moreover, I also learned that lives on the outskirts, where Douglass used to live, weren’t deemed to be as harsh as those on the plantation. As Douglass expressed at the end of the passage, he was “out of the way of the bloody scene” until he moved to the plantation. All in all, with Douglass being exposed to an outrageous scene at an early age, his experience not only etched an indelible mark on his memory but also on that of thousand readers whose feelings are shaken by the immorality of the American contemporary society.