The life of African slaves in America was extremely difficult and actually contained only a few things that some would consider part of a normal life. Many faced difficulties such as severe physical, verbal and sexual abuse. The life of a slave was short, and many even wished it were shorter. White's Ar't I a Woman and Douglass's The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass detail the lives of many different slaves and help put perspective on some of the darkest years in American history. The books use two different styles to convey a similar story of desperation in which seemingly loving Christians dehumanized and tortured their own human brothers. Slavery was run by the greed of large Southern plantation owners. The overwhelming desire to continually acquire wealth led slave owners to falsify their sound Christian values ​​and adopt habits that could only strengthen their profits regardless of the harm it did to the slaves. Most of these customs were aimed at breaking or dehumanizing slaves. A common practice was to not allow slaves to know their age. This was a way to make black children feel inferior to white children; children can be petty, letting the smallest things become something that plagues them constantly. Some owners, or their overseers, were extremely cruel. Some would revel in the utter mistreatment of slaves. Douglass's first Captain Anthony and his overseer, Mr. Plummer, would never hesitate to use a whip or club on a slave. Douglas even struggles to describe the violence of Aunt Hester's whipping. An even more gruesome example of violence, two chapters later, involved a slave who refused to come out of a stream after being whipped. After refusing to listen to the overseer, Mr. Gore, shot... in the middle of the paper... as slaves. His text is much more enlightening when it comes to factual knowledge than Douglass's. His book doesn't strive so much to entertain as to educate. White is also very successful in educating her readers about the trials faced by enslaved women. The seemingly infinite number. Both books, however, are excellent portraits of the reality of slavery. Starting from the ease of childhood through the significantly more difficult teenage years of brutal physical labor for males and pressure of childbirth for females; followed by the ever-dreaded years of adulthood, filled with death from exhaustion and disease. The life of slaves was long and hard, although often quite short. Slavery was an unjust institution justified by a perverse Christianity for the well-being of a few very wealthy Southern slave owners. It will forever remain an ugly scar on American history.