Bay of the Free
          Dehumanization, although a concrete historical fact, is not a given destiny but the result of an unjust order that engenders violence in the oppressors, which in turn dehumanizes the oppressed (Freire) . Such example of this would've been to get rid of their abilities to read, write, and do what they want. In the Narrative of The Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave by Frederick Douglas,  dehumanization plays a big role. In chapter ten, Douglass writes about what life was like as a slave in the 1800s. Douglas also discusses how the slave owners would dehumanize the slaves, and that the Chesapeake Bay was seen as a symbolic place where the slaves believed it was a place of freedom. Due to the fact that they saw ships that came from all parts of the world. This symbolism is a form of ecocriticism which is the study of literature and environment from of an interdisciplinary point of view according to Jimmy (369, 370). Therefore, Douglas doesn’t let dehumanization affect him because he knows he can escape and be free someday due to the fact that he is able to read and write.
    In Douglass Narrative, he talks about how dehumanization affected the lives of many slaves. He explains how he had gone through that when he says:                     
Never having enjoyed, to any considerable extent, her soothing presence, her tender and watchful care, I received the tidings of [my mother’s] death with much the same emotions I should have probably felt at the death of a stranger. (2)
By this, Douglass is saying that at birth the mothers get their kids taken away from them and they don't have any sort of relationship with each other. By the slave owners doing this, they were able to disciple the children how they wanted. As time moved on Douglass was moved to Maryland, Baltimore to work on Mr. Covey’s field. Here Douglass realized he can be free because he says:
Mr. Covey sent me, very early in the morning of one of our coldest days in the month of January, to the woods, to get a load of wood. He gave me a team of unbroken oxen. He told me which was the in-hand ox, and which the off-hand one. He then tied the end of a large rope around the horns of the in-hand ox, and gave me the other end of it. (51)
      What  Douglass divulges about this is the owner gave him some sort of freedom allowing him to go out with a group of untrained oxen to go get wood also helping out on how to tie onto the oxen and giving him a responsibility to go alone to collect.
In the Douglass’s narrative, Douglass realizes how evil dehumanized is because the slaves were feed like pigs, and their foods were given to them all mashed up in a “trough” which was a large wooden box pig would eat out of. Also, the slave owners would make the slaves get naked and whip them if they have done something wrong or if they were lacking in their work. The owners would whip the slaves until they weren’t able to whip anymore. An example of this is when Douglass went out to get the wood that Mr. Covey had requested. When Douglass  goes to open the woods gate, he leaves the oxen's alone for a second and before he could get the ox-rope, the oxen's start to rush through the gate catching the gate between the wheels tearing the whole body of the cart apart, and almost crushing him against the gates-post. Once upon return Douglass tells Mr. Covey what had happened and Douglass says:
He ordered me to return to the woods again immediately. I did so, and he followed on after me.  Just as I got into the woods, he came up and told me to stop my cart. He then went to a large gum-tree, and with his axe cut three large switches, and, after trimming them up neatly with his pocketknife, he ordered me to take off my clothes. (52)
      What Douglass is saying here is that he was being dehumanized by the slave owner for what he has done, and how the the slave owner was able to make switches and demanded Douglass to stripp his cloths so he can whip him. After the whipping that Mr. Covey gave Douglass lived with him for one year. During the first six months of that year Mr. Covey scarcely a week without whipping him. Douglass says:
I was seldom free from a sore back. My awkwardness was almost always his excuse for whipping me. We were worked fully up to the point of endurance. Long before day we were up, our horses fed, and by the first approach of day we were off to the field with our hoes and ploughing teams. Mr. Covey gave us enough to eat, but scarce time to eat it. We were often less than five minutes taking our meals. We were often in the field from the first approach of day till its last lingering ray had left us; and at saving-fodder time, midnight often caught us in the field binding blades. (52,53)
What this means is that the slave owner stopped beating the slaves so that he can have them fresh, so that he can work them day and night without any rest. He barely gave them time to eat because he wanted to make sure that the work on the plantation was complete,  The slave owner would work them all as soon as first light came up and as soon as it got dark. Through this suffering and dehumanization that had he had gone through Douglass still believed he can escape through the Chesapeake Bay because he was taught the A,B,C and how to read by Mrs. Auldi wife of Hugh Auldi where Douglass lived for seven years on. The reason he believed that he was gonna be free was because to white folks, the blacks weren't able to read and right meaning that they were slaves. But the ones that were able to read and right had meant that they had some form education meant that they were free slaves.  

      Nevertheless Douglass finally escapes from dehumanization because he had one dream. That one dream was to gain his freedom through the Chesapeake Bay. While Douglass is a man transformed into an animal, the ships are free to go wherever they please. But the true freedom for Douglass wasn't the Chesapeake Bay but was Mr. Gardner. Hugh Auld, Douglass’s occasional master sends Douglass to Gardner to learn the trade of caulking. Gardner’s shipyard is disorderly with racial tension between free-black carpenters and white carpenters, and Gardner is under pressure to complete several ships for a deadline. From there Gardner teaches Douglass and pays him and doesn't treat him as a slave on his ship he's treated like a free man.