In the well-written short story The Life of Fredrick Douglass, the author, and former slave known as Fredrick Douglass, uses multiple examples of brutal whippings and severe punishments to describe the terrible conditions in which slaves lived African Americans facing south. Douglass's purpose in writing this tale was to show the physical and emotional pain that slaves had to endure from their owners. According to Fredrick Douglass “adopted slavers are the worst” and he demonstrates this with his anecdotes from when he was a slave; furthermore, slave owners through marriage were not accustomed to the rules of slavery, so they acted more harshly. It also shows that Christian slave owners were not always more saintly, they also showed no mercy towards their slaves and Douglass considered them religious hypocrites. Like most Southern slave owners, Thomas Auld was a cruel master who always disciplined his slaves for their wrong doings. He was a cowardly man because he did not have the ability or courage to properly keep slaves, but "he found himself unable to manage his slaves either by force, fear, or fraud" (p. 380). Auld was a ruthless man who worked slaves to the limit and barely gave them enough to eat. Douglass mentioned how often slaves stole food to survive and to avoid getting sick. “We were therefore reduced to the miserable necessity of living at the expense of our neighbors. This is what we did by begging or stealing […]” (p. 379). Most slave owners were unsympathetic towards their slaves; however, Douglass found from experience that "adopted slave owners are the worst." Since adopted slave owners were married to slave owners and had not grown up in conditions of slavery, Douglass believed they did not know how to… middle of paper… master practiced. He came to the conclusion that being religious did not show their goodness as people but instead highlighted their brutality. The life of Fredrick Douglass shows how slavery could affect not only slaves but also owners. Thomas Auld was overall a cowardly and rather harsh owner compared to other slave owners. Douglass believed that since Auld had gained ownership of slaves by marriage, it made him a more unpleasant master because he was not used to living around slavery and having so much power. Fredrick Douglass was also convinced that religious slave owners were false Christians because they had become more hypocritical and thought that God had given them the power to hold slaves. By telling stories to the reader, Douglass hoped to raise awareness of the harsh topic of slavery and to show how slaves maintained hope during these miserable times..