During the reading a quotation that made a strong impression on me was, “I have said my master found religious sanction for his cruelty… I have seen him tie up a lame young woman, and whip her with the heavy cow skin upon her naked shoulders, causing the warm red blood to drip; and, in justification of the bloody deed, he would quote this passage of the Scripture— ‘He that knoweth his master’s will, and does it not, shall be beaten with many stripes.’” Reading this struck out to me because I found it gruesome that someone was using the Scripture as an excuse to tie a woman up for hours and excessively whip her, especially since she was burned so badly and couldn’t even use her hands. A question that raised for me when reading this was, “How can this be considered something that is morally and religiously accepted?” Religion is supposed to guide people into making the right choices, however, this master is using it as an excuse to do damage instead. This passage made me think that perhaps the masters were brainwashed into committing these hate crimes thinking that it was okay to do because it’s what everyone else was doing at the time. I don’t see how such a large amount of people could justify the atrocities they were committing. Frederick’s literary style tells me that he was very much literate and had been reading for a while because his writing is well put together. I found it easy to read and it contained a lot of voice and imagery inside. The way he describes certain situations are extremely gruesome, but I know it’s because he wants the reader to imagine what it was like to be in that situation. I felt like he was almost having a conversation with the reader which also made it easy to trust him.
Fiona, As we discussed in our Zoom session, Douglass wants to shine a light on the hypocrisy of those who claimed to be good Christians, while at the same time treating slaves savagely. One possible explanation for the church condoning slavery that Douglass mentions early in the narrative is that in the Book of Genesis it says that Ham and his descendants would be cursed. A legend later arose that said that Ham had dark skin. Because of this, some Christians maintained that Africans, because of their dark skin, were descendants of Ham and therefore destined to be cursed, as ordained in the Bible, thus using the Bible to justify the enslavement of black people.