Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, depicts a vivid reality of the hardships endured by the African American culture in the period of slavery. One of the many things shown in Frederick's narrative is how slaves, in their own personal way, resisted their masters authority. Another is how slaves were able to create their own autonomous culture within the brutal system in which they were bound. There are many examples in the narrative where Frederick tries to show the resistance of the slaves. The resistors did not go unpunished though, they were punished to the severity of death. Fredrick tells of these instances with a startling sense of casualness, which seems rather odd when comprehending the content of them. He does this though, not out of desensitization, but to show that these were very commonplace things that happened all over the South at the time. One example that Frederick mentioned in the subject of resistance of the slaves against the masters is when he was under the charge of Mr. Gore. A slave by the name of Demby was getting whipped for a mistake he made. After Demby received but a few stripes he ran and jumped into a creek to the depth of his shoulders and refused to come out. This took great bravery considering Mr. Gore had a famous reputation for being nasty to slaves. Demby was given to the count of three to get out of the creek or he was to be shot, knowing the consequences Demby still refused to get out. He was then shot in the face by Mr. Gore with a musket. Demby truly resisted his master at the greatest cost he could have paid, his life. Another example given by Frederick in his narrative of how slaves were able to ... ... middle of paper ... ...laves to be drunk during this time; in fact, they often got angry if they weren't drunk. Frederick feels that the master tries to make the slaves sick of freedom during this holiday time, by showing them only the abuse of it rather than the good. There was also a mention of a couple of "classes" among the black slaves. Slaves, from the viewpoint of Frederick, I feel, had a sort of "slave-class". The richer your master was the higher class you were, the poorer your master was the lower class you were. "To be a poor man's slave was a disgrace indeed!", was what Frederick mentioned of the issue. As you can see Frederick Douglass provided many glimpses into the world of slavery in his narrative. He showed many different examples of how slaves were able to resist their masters and create their own autonomous culture within the brutal system of slavery.
Now on the other had Frederick was born into slavery. He was living in Maryland, born to a white man unknown to him and his mother was also a slave. Frederick pursued how to read and write while being a slave but found that it was an uphill battle, because no slaves were permitted to be educated. Frederick persevered and learned to read and write but prior to his escape up North his moral was very low because being educated as a slave he states, “It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out”(Narrative of the Life of F.D. Pg 1073 col.2). Can you imagine this; a slave that can now read and write all of a sudden wishes the opposite? It’s tough to stomach the grief that he must have felt during that time.
Frederick Douglass, an African American social reformer who escaped from slavery, in his autobiography “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself,” denotes the perilous life of a slave in the South. Through syntax, Douglass is able to persuade his readers to support the abolitionist movement as his writing transitions from shifting sentence lengths to parallel structure and finally to varying uses of punctuation. Douglass begins his memoir with a combination of long and short sentences that serve to effectively depict life his life as a slave. This depiction is significant because it illustrates the treatment of slaves in the south allows his audience to despise the horrors of slavery. In addition, this
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass written by Frederick Douglass himself is a brutally honest portrayal of slavery's dehumanizing capabilities. The style of this famous autobiography can be best described as personal, emotional, and compelling. By writing this narrative, Douglass wants his audience to understand him. He does this by speaking informally like a person would when writing a letter or telling a story to a friend. By clearly establishing his credibility and connecting with his audience, Douglass uses numerous rhetorical devices to argue for the immorality of slavery.
The Life of Fredrick Douglass shows how slavery could of not only affected the slaves but the owners as well. Thomas Auld was overall a cowardly owner and quite tough compared to other slaveholders. Douglass believed that since Auld obtained slave owning from marriage, it made him more of an unpleasant master because he wasn’t used to being around slavery and having so much power. Fredrick Douglass also was convinced that religious slaveholders were false Christians because they became more self-righteous and thought that God gave them the power to hold slaves. By telling stories to the reader, Douglass hoped to bring awareness to the harsh subject of slavery and show how the slaves kept hope during these miserable times.
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass gives a first person perspective on the life of a slave laborer in both the rural south and the city. Frederick Douglass gave himself an education against horrible odds, and was able to read and think forever about the evils of slavery and good reasons for its abolishment. The primary reason for his disgust with slavery was its effect of dehumanizing not only the slaves, but their masters too. His main goal: to abolish slavery.
From before the country’s conception to the war that divided it and the fallout that abolished it, slavery has been heavily engrained in the American society. From poor white yeoman farmers, to Northern abolitionist, to Southern gentry, and apathetic northerners slavery transformed the way people viewed both their life and liberty. To truly understand the impact that slavery has had on American society one has to look no further than those who have experienced them firsthand. Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave and advocate for the abolitionist, is on such person. Douglass was a living contradiction to American society during his time. He was an African-American man, self-taught, knowledgeable, well-spoken, and a robust writer. Douglass displayed a level of skill that few of his people at the time could acquire. With his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave Written by Himself, Douglass captivated the people of his time with his firsthand accounts into the horror and brutality that is the institution of slavery.
Her piece was made to make people rethink their morals and ideas that they may have had about slavery. Frederick’s writings were meant to do something similar. He wrote “I remember only the day of the week; for, at that time, I had no knowledge of the days of the month, nor, indeed, of the months of the year.”(344). Slaves at this time got little to no education, and they were treated as objects rather than real living beings. They were seldom fed till they were full, and scarcely clothed.
The tone established in the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is unusual in that from the beginning to the end the focus has been shifted. In the beginning of the narrative Douglass seems to fulfill every stereotypical slavery theme. He is a young black slave who at first cannot read and is very naïve in understanding his situation. As a child put into slavery Douglass does not have the knowledge to know about his surroundings and the world outside of slavery. In Douglass’ narrative the tone is first set as that of an observer, however finishing with his own personal accounts.
As both the narrator and author of “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, Written by Himself” Frederick Douglass writes about his transition from a slave to a well educated and empowered colored young man. As a skilled and spirited man, he served as both an orator and writer for the abolitionist movement, which was a movement to the abolishment of slavery. At the time of his narrative’s publication, Douglass’s sole goal of his writings was to essentially prove to those in disbelief that an articulate and intelligent man, such as himself, could have,in fact, been enslaved at one point in time. While, Douglass’ narrative was and arguably still is very influential, there are some controversial aspects of of this piece, of which Deborah McDowell mentions in her criticism.
In conclusion, Frederick used these key points in his narrative to attack the institution of slavery. The speeches he made using these points to white abolitionist astonished them because they did not imagine a slave had the mind capacity to speak this well. By doing so, Frederick Douglass became the outspoken leader for slaves in the abolitionist movement.
He had long fought to learn to read and was so excited and eager to do so, he never expected the circumstances of this to be as dehumanizing as they were. He regretted learning to read because it brought him nothing but desperation, he learned his awful truth and that of his fellow slaves. "It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy." (Douglass, 24) The truth was that the more he learned the more he became aggravated, he knew there was not much he could do. It brought his moral down along with many other feelings, even a slave like Frederick had learned the awful feeling of
In sum, all of these key arguments exist in “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” because of the institution of slavery and its resulting lack of freedom that was used to defend it. This text’s arguments could all be gathered together under the common element of inequality and how it affected the practical, social, and even spiritual lives of the slaves.
The Narrative of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass is written to have people place their feet in the shoes of Frederick Douglass and try to understand the experience he went through as a slave. Douglass writes this piece of literature with strong wording to get his point across. He is not trying to point out the unpleasant parts of history, but to make people face the truth. He wants readers to realize that slavery is brutalizing and dehumanizing, that a slave is able to become a man, and that some slaves, like himself, have intellectual ability. These points are commonly presented through the words of Douglass because of his diction.
Within the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave” Douglass discusses the deplorable conditions in which he and his fellow slaves suffered from. While on Colonel Lloyd’s plantation, slaves were given a “monthly allowance of eight pounds of pork and one bushel of corn” (Douglass 224). Their annual clothing rations weren’t any better; considering the type of field work they did, what little clothing they were given quickly deteriorated. The lack of food and clothing matched the terrible living conditions. After working on the field all day, with very little rest the night before, they must sleep on the hard uncomfortably cramped floor with only a single blanket as protection from the cold. Coupled with the overseer’s irresponsible and abusive use of power, it is astonishing how three to four hundred slaves did not rebel. Slave-owners recognized that in able to restrict and control slaves more than physical violence was needed. Therefore in able to mold slaves into the submissive and subservient property they desired, slave-owners manipulated them by twisting religion, instilling fear, breaking familial ties, making them dependent, providing them with an incorrect view of freedom, as well as refusing them education.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, brings to light many of the social injustices that colored men, women, and children all were forced to endure throughout the nineteenth century under Southern slavery laws. Douglass's life-story is presented in a way that creates a compelling argument against the justification of slavery. His argument is reinforced though a variety of anecdotes, many of which detailed strikingly bloody, horrific scenes and inhumane cruelty on the part of the slaveholders. Yet, while Douglas’s narrative describes in vivid detail his experiences of life as a slave, what Douglass intends for his readers to grasp after reading his narrative is something much more profound. Aside from all the physical burdens of slavery that he faced on a daily basis, it was the psychological effects that caused him the greatest amount of detriment during his twenty-year enslavement. In the same regard, Douglass is able to profess that it was not only the slaves who incurred the damaging effects of slavery, but also the slaveholders. Slavery, in essence, is a destructive force that collectively corrupts the minds of slaveholders and weakens slaves’ intellects.