![]() ![]() In his novel, Madison begins by giving the Hero a physical figure of a man, a typical male figure. In order to save his fellow men from being further emasculated, he had to create a figure of a male hero upon the mind of the slave masters. This inescapable truth was the same norm he sought to counter. On the other hand, if they rebelled violently they would be regarded as beasts and therefore, inferior to white men. Because they were enslaved and could not do anything about it, they were assumed to inferior and therefore, unmanly. This applies very well to slaves, especially the male slaves, in the United States. It reduces the oppressed in such a way that whichever choice one makes, the result is equally bad. Oppression is a double edged sword to the oppressed. It this flawed view of slavery and masculinity that Fredrick Douglass sought to confront in his novel The Heroic Slave. ![]() All slaves were treated equally and performed similar duties in the farms. However, there was no identification of slaves as male or female slaves. In this period, masculinity was an important aspect of manhood white men. White slave masters had to reduce the black African slaves to inferior species in order to justify their actions against fellow humans. Black slaves were subjected to inhumane treatment at the hands of their slave masters. ![]()
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