Realism Assignment 2: The Battle with Mr. Covey

After being severely mistreated by Mr. Covey, Douglass specifically details his reasons for going to his master to ask for his interference. He writes that after becoming sick with exhaustion while fanning wheat, Covey ordered him to get up, and when he failed to do Covey "then gave me a savage kick in the side, and told me to get up. I tried to do so, but fell back in the attempt. He gave me another kick, and again told me to rise. I again tried, and succeeded in gaining my feet: but, stopping to get the tub with which I was feeding the fan, I again staggered and fell. While down in this situation, Mr. Covey took up the hickory slat with which Hughes had been striking off the half- bushel measure, and with it gave me a heavy blow upon the head, making a large wound, and the blood ran freely; and with this, again told me to get up." At this point he resolves to walk to his master, even though he is in an extremely weak condition, nearly dies in doing so, saying that he was only saved by his hair matting enough to stop the bleeding. His maser however remains mainly uneffected even by his pathetic state, and sends him back to Covey. This leads to his resolution to fight Covey in desperation when he attempts to whip him.

The social issue which Douglass was writing against was, clearly, slavery. He describes the process of his degredation from a man being to a slave. His mindset and very being seems to change at this point, he is not simply a man who is a slave; slavery has filled and flattened his entire being, altering him from a human being to a uniform unit of labor. He describes alteration writing that "Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me. I was broken in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute! " He stays in this state until he resolves to excert his freedom on the most basic level as a human being and fight Mr. Covey when he attempts to tie and whip him. After this point, though still a slave, he regains his humanity.

Douglass wrote this with the intention of forcing people to look at the horror of slavery. At this some disagreement had been taken over the issue for a considerable time, and the discussion of the issue had largely fallen for many into the category of tea time politics. This is comparable to the issues today that we watch on the news, breifly think about how awful they are and that "someone" should do something about it, then proceed with our lives and frozen dinners. Writings of experiences such as Douglass's forcefully brought these issues to the forefront in a uncomfortable and therefore unignorable way.