do that to slaves in order to keep his job. Covey looks at Douglass as an animal, an ox, and treats him like one too. This is like Claggart who treated the people aboard the ship as machines and not as humans. Covey was a slavebreaker; thus, beating the blacks who were sent to him to be broken in. Douglass gets sick and Covey does not believe that he is sick only that he wanted to get out of working so he continues to treat him as a healthy slave would be treated. This is where Covey and Douglass begin their escapades with each other. Douglass begins to mouth off to Covey saying he wished he had another master and this leads to Douglass running away and then returning and then the final incident and to Douglass ultimately escaping. Throughout these few ordeals it shows that Douglass would rather die then to give in. He looked to God to help him through and in the end that must have worked, for he escaped.Douglass does not change society as a whole nor does he change something for somebody else. He changes the oppressive state for himself. He escaped to Massachusetts in 1868. This is where he tries to attack the society as a whole. In Massachusetts he became an active anti-slavery lecturer. By changing his surroundings, those of an oppressed person he was given the chance to try and change slavery as an institution. By escaping to a free state he was able to attack the institution of slavery and be safe, instead of attacking one master and having to suffer consequences. Unlike Billy Budd who did not prevail in his oppressive society Frederick Douglass has the chance to. While putting his life on the line to escape he still did it and in the end it would help him make a difference for all the people still succumbed by the harsh ‘peculiar institution.” Frederick Douglass was a nonfictional black who had to escape his master in order to gain freedom, Jim in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was also a black who ...
