Question

Context Clues, Roots, and Affixes

Assignment Active
Using Context Clues to Define a Word
Which antonym helped you determine the meaning of
callous?
I suffered more anxiety than most of my fellow-slaves....
Their backs had been made familiar with the bloody lash,
so that they had become callous; mine was yet tender; for
while at Baltimore I got few whippings....
--Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,
Frederick Douglass

Answer 1

Frederick Douglass highlights the deep moral conflicts facing White slaveholders, such as selling their own children and the per-verse satisfaction mistresses derive from the punishment of slaves, using vivid and harrowing imagery.

Step-by-step explanation:

According to Frederick Douglass in his narrative, the moral complications of slavery for White slaveholders in the South included the dehumanizing act of selling their own children and the per-version of familial relations. The imagery Douglass uses portrays the horrific conditions suffered by slaves, especially those who were of mixed race and, therefore, often the children of their masters. He describes how slaveholding mistresses would take pleasure in seeing these slaves whipped, illustrating the cruel and corrupt nature of the institution of slavery. The contradictory nature of a father selling his children and a brother whipping his brother under the authority of their shared father illustrates the deeply immoral and conflicted position of the White slaveholders.