In his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Frederick Douglass recounts his personal experience as an enslaved person in the 19th century. In his book, he illustrates how as a result of living during this traumatic context, enslaved people learn to fear enslavers and their corresponding punishments, using false personas, or figurative masks, to endure the dehumanizing context. However, since individualistic values make up one’s identity, when enslaved people are forced to hide and go against these values — defying slave owners — their identities are invalidated. Douglass uses graphic imagery to display how enslaved peoples must hide their genuine emotions to survive, therefore replacing their true selves with false facades that go against their intrinsic values; in doing so, he argues how enslaved people lose their identities to the traumatic experience of slavery in more ways than through physical abuse.

Douglass uses powerful images to show how enslaved people use fake personas to avoid violent repercussions from their masters, which alters their inherent personas. When one of Colonel Lloyd’s enslaved people reveals the truth about his horrible working conditions, Douglass depicts the consequences by writing,“he was immediately chained and handcuffed…by a hand more unrelenting than death” (31). This somber imagery depicts how slavery is restrictive through the action of getting “chained and handcuffed,” which physically binds the autonomy of people’s limbs but also psychologically strips one’s mind of power and control. Furthermore, the personification of slavery as a “hand more unrelenting than death” implies that slavery’s toils are worse than death; indeed, enslaved people prefer even the work of death’s hand to their master’s punishing hand. This diabolical depiction of pain reveals the deep-seated desperation enslaved people have to avoid punishment, even shifting their personal attitudes and principles to please their masters, which leads to a loss of identity. Douglass then defines a cause-and-effect relationship between these appalling consequences and enslaved people’s responses of false praise: due to the punishments given to enslaved people who speak negatively about their masters, the effect is that “slaves… almost universally say they are contented, and that their masters are kind” (31). Hence, enslaved people learn to avoid punishment by discounting their genuine beliefs, and vocalizing simulated eulogizations instead, which leads to a disoriented identity between their genuine distress and their chipper fronts. Their faux flattery functions solely to serve their master’s egos, and as a result of this fear-filled practice, enslaved people are left with a distorted persona that is a mixture of counterfeit praise, trepidation, and aversion towards their master.

Douglass later provides another brutish image of punishment, and how enslaved people must change their personas to avoid this pain, which causes a disfigured sense of identity. Douglass describes Colonel Lloyd ruthlessly punishing old Barney, a caring father of a son who manages the master’s favored horses. Although Colonel Lloyd entrusts Barney with these horses, he still gets chastised for no other reason than to satisfy his master’s sadism. For instance, Colonel Lloyd forces Barney to “uncover his bald head, kneel down upon the cold, damp ground, and receive upon his naked and toil-worn shoulders more than thirty lashes” (30). The grim imagery of Barney yielding to his master by physically bowing and “kneel[ing] down” demonstrates his total obedience to this vicious slaveholder and reveals a detachment from his own values — which do not inherently yield to vile slaveholders. Enslaved people heed their masters’ verdicts out of perturbation and to avoid punishment. Because of Colonel Lloyd’s erratic beatings, Barney’s fear of punishment forces him to yield to his master’s control — even if it means going against his own values, which leads him to have a broken sense of identity. Douglass uses these examples of penalizations to show how enslaved people feel overwhelmingly terrified and powerless against their masters, which lead them to not only abandon their morals but also shift their behaviors to suit their masters’ interests, thus inducing a traumatized, distorted identity.

Douglass also uses symbolic imagery to demonstrate the effects of figurative masks on people who lose themselves through the concealment of true identities with falsehoods, which causes harm and alienation. Due to the unease surrounding staged interrogations about working conditions, the enslaved community establishes the maxim that “a still tongue makes a wise head” (31). The symbol of one’s “tongue” represents enslaved people’s authentic thoughts; therefore, a “still tongue” depicts an individual with no thoughts or self-forming ideas — which further refers to an unintelligent person. This motto portrays enslaved people who lie and compliment their masters as “wise” because enslaved people avoid successive consequences by disregarding their own opinions. Thus, this same practice of silence that saves enslaved people from admonition also detaches them from their distinctive identities, because enslaved people do not express their true, unique opinions. Douglass depicts how enslaved people use figurative masks to cover up their veracious beliefs in order to appease slaveholders; the fear of punishment that enslaved people yield to results in a loss of free will and individualism in their lives, impelling a twisted, conflicted identity.

Douglass’s narrative not only conveys how slavery invalidates one’s moral standards and sense of self, but how it forces enslaved people to express false notions that please their masters, thus leading to the contortion of one’s intrinsic identity. The barbaric abuse from slavery — both physically and verbally jarring — leaves enslaved people with lasting fear and trauma, which is neither light nor temporary. Rather, the cruel, innate culture of the slave institution embeds into people’s minds, changing their attitudes, standards, and principles. As a result, it takes courage, persistence, and staunch resistance for the enslaved in the 19th century Southern United States to both physically and mentally break free from the social stigma they were born and forced into by white slave owners.