The Making of a Slave

We believe that there are many things that go into making a slave, but the three that seemed to stick out to us in Douglass' narrative were, breaking the slave down, separating them from their families, and not allowing them personal possessions, or anything that made them feel human. Slaves have no true sense of identity or belonging, they are forced to be ignorant about their family and where they come from. The Slave owners would extract mothers from their infants within a year of them being born.Without knowing their family, slaves have no true sense of identity.


The slave owners would physically and mentally break down the slaves by instilling fear into them, they were too scared to run away or to do anything wrong because of the fear of the repercussions.The torture that slaves incurred as “property” ensured that a lot of slaves would not have the energy and also fear the consequences if they tried to escape.Slaves are property under law; they have no rights and no identity because they are not “human” in a legal sense.

Another factor that goes into enslaving people is not allowing them personal possessions. The slaves were rationed amounts of clothing, food, and they were not given a place to sleep. If any “human” has any African heritage they automatically become a slave. These factors do contribute to enslaving both a population and individuals, if you can break an entire group of people and make them feel enough like property, then they begin to feel this too. But, there are slaves who didn’t believe this and they hoped and dreamed of freedom, which is why we believe Frederick Douglass chose to include this in the beginning of his narrative, he was one of those people who would not give up until he was free.