Read the excerpt from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.

She was nevertheless left a slave--a slave for life--a slave in the hands of strangers; and in their hands she saw her children, her grandchildren, and her great-grandchildren divided, like so many sheep, without being gratified with the small privilege of a single word as to their or her own destiny.
Douglass uses the imagery of sheep in this excerpt for what purpose?
A)to describe how enslaved persons were treated like animals
B)to explain how helpless he felt when he was sold to another master
C)to illustrate how kind and gentle Douglass’s grandmother was
D)to describe how many children Douglass’s grandmother had