Status Updates From Narrative of the Life of Fr...

[of reaching the free states]

Among fellow-men yet feeling as if in the midst of wild beasts, whose greediness to swallow up the trembling and half-famished fugitive is only equalled by that with which the monsters of the deep swallow up the helpless fish upon which they subsist

“O why was I born a man of whom to make a brute!”

[same as Mandela saw the effects of appartheid on the opressors]
I saw more clearly than ever the brutalizing effects of slavery upon both slave and slaveholder

[the dangers of dehumanization]
We were all ranked together at the evaluation. Men and women, old and young, married and single, were ranked with horses, sheep, and swine. There were horses and men, cattle and women, pigs and children, all holding the same rank in the scale of being and were all subjected to the same narrow examination

In moments of agony I envied my fellow slaves for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own, anything, no matter what, to get rid of thinking. It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me.