Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Book Report

The brutality that slaves endured form their masters and from the institution of slavery caused slaves to be denied their god given rights. In the "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass," Douglass has the ability to show the psychological battle between the white slave holders and their black slaves, which is shown by Douglass' own intellectual struggles against his white slave holders. I will focus my attention on how education allowed Douglass to understand how slavery was wrong, and how the Americans saw the blacks as not equal, and only suitable for slave work. I will also contrast how Douglass' view was very similar to that of the women in antebellum America, and the role that Christianity played in his life as a slave and then as a free man. The novel clearly displays the children's animalistic behavior when they were not regularly allowanced. Douglass says, "Our food was coarse corn meal boiled, which was called mush. It was put into a large wooden tray or trough, and set down upon the ground. The children were then called, like so many pigs, and like so many pigs they would come and devour the mush; some with oyster-shells, others with pieces of shingle, some with naked hands, and none with spoons. He that ate fastest got most; he that was strongest secured the best place; and few left the trough satisfied" (Douglass 41-42). This clearly describes how children where treated like animals and their inability to act in the manner of a normal educated child. Slave children were denied many luxuries that other children took for granted. The knowledge of their birthdays was one of these luxuries. Douglass states, "I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it. By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant. I do not remember to have ever met a slave who could tell of his birthday. They seldom come nearer to it than planting-time, harvest-time, cherry-time, springtime, or fall-time. A want of information concerning my own was a source of unhappiness to me even during childhood. The white children could tell their ages. I could not tell why I ought to be deprived of the same privilege" (Douglass 19). This passage clearly indicates differences between white children and slav...

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...ppressors and raised it against them, and his words became a healing balm and a fixer of wrongs of slavery. Douglass sums this up great when writing a letter to Mr. Auld in Gorn Document 5 by saying, "I intend to make use of you as a weapon with which to assail the system of slavery-as a means of concentrating public attention on the system, and deepening their horror of trafficking in the souls and bodies of me… make use of you as a means of exposing the character of the American church and clergy-and as a means of bringing this guilty nation with yourself to repentance" (Gorn 242). We also see how the women in antebellum America shared the views of the black slaves, in seeing that it was inhumane to treat another human in such a brutal way. These women and the run away slaves such as Douglass helped to start the anti-slave movement in North America, and started to challenge the southern religion. Throughout the book, we saw Douglass go through several life changes, from slavery to freedom, from the south to the North, from a young man of many names to the adult named Frederick Douglass, thus in the end, this gifted man helped America come to terms with slavery as it really was.