Frederick Douglas's narrative, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, depicts a vivid reality of the hardships endured by the African American culture in the period of slavery. One of the many things shown in Frederick's narrative is how slaves, in their own personal way, resisted their masters authority. Another is how slaves were able to create their own autonomous culture within the savagely brutal system in which they were bound. There are many examples in the narrative that Frederick tries to show the resistance of the slaves. The resistors did not go unpunished though, in fact they were punished to the severity of death. Fredrick tells these instances with a startling sense of casualness, which is rather odd feeling when comprehending the content of them. He does this though, not out of desensitization, but to show that these were very commonplace things that happened all over the South at the time. One example that Frederick mentioned in the subject of resistance of the slaves against the masters is when he was under the charge of Mr. Gore. A slave by the name of Demby was getting whipped for a mistake he made. After Demby received but a few stripes he ran and jumped into a creek to the depth of his shoulders and refused to come out. This took great bravery considering Mr. Gore had a famous reputation for being nasty to slaves. Demby was given to the count of three to get out of the creek or he was to be shot, knowing the consequences Demby still refused to get out. He was then shot in the face by Mr. Gore with a musket. Demby truly resisted his master at the greatest cost he could have paid, his life. Another example given by Frederick in his narrative of how slaves were able to resist is that of himself dealing with an overseer named Mr. Covey. Frederick had fallen ill during his work one day and was no longer physically able to even stand any longer. When Mr. Covey saw this he immediately started...
