In his account of the life of Frederick Douglass, Douglass constantly describes the horrors of slavery and never fails to remind readers how evil it is. He does an excellent job of illustrating how whites' dehumanization of slaves played a significant role in the continued production of slavery and the practices that resulted from it. It's almost as if without treating these people like animals, society would not be able to continue the violence necessary to keep the economy intact. The first example of dehumanization that Douglass illustrates is in the first chapter, where he describes the separation of slave children from their mothers at a young age. "Often, before the child reaches the twelfth month, the mother is taken away and rented to some distant farm, and the child is placed in the care of an old woman, too old for field work." (Douglass 15). A child is barely one year old when he is already separated from his mother. Douglass even expresses his confusion and disbelief towards such a practice. “What this separation is for, I do not know, except to hinder the development of the child's affection towards the mother and to attenuate and destroy the mother's natural affection for the child. This is the inevitable result." (Douglass 15). If they were separated, the child would not have as much emotional attachment to the mother as the mother would have to them. The slave owners of this time hardly thought of doing something like this. For them it must have been as easy as separating animals from their parents at a certain age. This simply proves that slaves were nothing more than animals to white people. The second example of dehumanization that... middle of the paper... those slaves were fed. Just like pigs, they ate from troughs, just like pigs, they were called food. Slave owners simply did not view their slaves as equals, and this made it easy for them to continue the brutality that made slavery possible. They wanted to feed their slaves as little as possible, while ensuring that they were fed well enough to do the work they were supposed to do. In conclusion, Frederick Douglass uses vivid imagery to describe the brutality of slavery. Without this brutality, the culture of slavery would not exist. Douglass worked to abolish slavery, recognizing from personal experience that the mistreatment of blacks was truly terrible. With this knowledge he managed to free himself. Works Cited Douglas, Frederick. An Account of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave. Wortley, near Leeds: Printed by J. Barker, 1846. Print.