s feeling first hand. Douglass’ narrative depicted the harsh cruelties of slavery and made this the focus of his arguments with the purpose of forcing people to see that slaveholding was evil and shameful. Douglass focused more on the perspective of the slaves themselves where Stowe described the slaveholders’ perspective more. Douglass took us through many different types of slave holders, some of whom he considered gentile and some who were brutal and animalistic. We experienced his pain and anguish through his eyes. In Stowe’s novel, we experienced more of the moral dilemmas resulting from this unchristian and immoral social acceptance that the white slaveholders were dealing with in a less descriptively brutal setting. Douglass gave detailed depictions of what happened to fellow slaves and him. “He would keep this lacerated woman tied up by her wrist to a bolt in the joist, three, four, and five hours at a time. He would tie her up early in the morning, whip her with a cow skin before breakfast, leave her tied up, go to his store, and returning to dinner repeat the castigation, laying on the rugged lash on flesh already raw by repeated blows…” Douglass wanted to show his readers the horrible and disgusting treatment of slaves. I believe that at the time that these writings were released that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was paid attention to more than The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. People did not want to hear the unbridled truth of what was going on in the slaveholding community. Abolitionism was not seen as a good thing when these writings came out. I believe that people would have been more accepting of a fictional novel rather than a graphic narrative, no one wanted to believe that they were just as wrong for keeping slaves as the harsh slaveholders who beat slaves. However, I feel that although Uncle Tom’s Cabin is an insightful novel, I found Douglass’ narrativ...
