Throughout the past, oppression has been a part of human relationships, from the treatment of brothers and sisters to slavery of an entire race of people, including everything else. This is empirically proven through the non-fictional autobiographies of two men; Benjamin Franklin and Frederick Douglass, both of whom recount the oppression of their times, due to several factors. These two people had quite an interesting perspective on the tragic institution of Oppression, with Frederick Douglass being a former slave who escaped to freedom, and Benjamin Franklin being a young white man from a mildly violent family who struggled and eventually managed to get out on his own. . So, by comparing and contrasting these two great figures of American thought and reason, I will talk about oppression throughout America's history. So, despite the differences in the two men's family lives, their obvious racial differences, and the lack of real education that these two men suffered from, they each suffered from oppression. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay First, I'll talk about the family lives of both men, starting with Frederick Douglass and then moving on to Benjamin Franklin. Frederick Douglass's family life was rather broken, he did not even know his age, I have no precise knowledge of my age, having never seen an authentic document containing it. (21). It is a sign of oppression, in that they used the lack of knowledge to keep the slaves down and make their history uncertain, giving the farm where they worked the only feeling of home they had ever known . Even though Benjamin Franklin knew his age, his brother physically abused him, because the blows of his passion pushed him too often to give me (86). This brings up the subject of siblings, something Douglass was fairly certain he possessed, being a half-breed in the world of slaves and white men, although he was never really sure, opinion also been whispered that my master was my father but of the accuracy of this opinion I know nothing; the means of knowledge were denied to me. (21) , and since his Master had children, it was quite possible that he actually had brothers and sisters. These are both forms of oppression, in the sense that physical violence would make you afraid to express your opinions, which is a form of oppression. Whereas having information about the nature of your siblings limits freedom by preventing you from fully knowing who your parents were and being forced to live in ignorance as to your true roots. So, now that we've looked at their family life and the oppression there, I'm going to move on to their racial differences and how each contributed to it with their own kind of oppression. The oppression factor I'm going to talk about now. , is one of race. Most people don't think of being a white man in colonial times as oppression, but I'm pretty sure Benjamin Franklin did, a thought I did, as I certainly did , in a very embarrassing and ridiculous way. (91), this speaks to the fact that white men had to have a certain shape, a certain appearance and conform to society in order to be accepted. It is a form of oppression because it limits a person's ability to be their own person, which is one of the worst forms of oppression in human history. Next, let's look at Douglass, a mulatto slave whose father was very..