The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass details the oppression Fredrick Douglass went through before his escape to freedom. In his narratives, Douglass offers the readers with fast hand information of the pain, brutality, and humiliation of the slaves. He points out the cruelty of this institution on both the perpetrator, and the victims. As a slave, Fredrick Douglass witnessed the brutalization of the blacks whose only crime was to be born of the wrong color. He narrates of the pain, suffering the slaves went through, and how he fought for his freedom through attaining education.
Douglass’s escape from slavery and eventual freedom are inseparable from his movingly narrated attainment of literacy. Douglass saw slavery as a dehumanizing institution. In his narratives, he sets an example to the other slaves on insisting upon their humanity to be acknowledged. Douglass refuses to acknowledge anything less than his spiritual, physical, and intellectual freedom. According to Douglass, their masters made academic was not worth to them, they made it hard for them to get literate. The slaves were forbidden from attaining any sort of education for the fear that they will gain insight, and rebel against them. The masters feared that if the slaves got education, they will become unmanageable and thus, could not allow them to get any education.
In his narratives, Douglass reveals a multitude of ways in which African-Americans were mistreated while in slavery. Initially, he never understood the direct meaning about the slave songs, but after learning that they were complains about slavery; he was now exposed to the horrors the slaves went through. The strength and academic worth of Douglass has inspired him with anti-slavery tales...
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... abolitionist in the American history. He became a famous abolitionist who gave an account of his life to help the rest of the Africans to overcome fear, and join in the fight against slavery. His will to education and gaining confidence to speak openly, helped him in his later life, as he was joined by many organizations in speaking publicly about the evils of slavery. Fredrick Douglas became one of the leading figures in the American Anti-Slavery Society.
Works Cited
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Dover Thrift Editions). New York: Dover Publications; Unabridged edition, 1995. Print.
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of an American Slave, Written by himself. New York: Blight, 2003. Print.
Gates, Henry Louis and McKay, Nellie Y. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2004. Print.
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself. Ed. William L. Andrews and William S. McFeely. Rev. ed. New York: Norton, 1996. Print.
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.
Douglass's Narrative brings an ugly era of American history to life as it weaves through his personal experiences with slavery, brutality, and escape. Most importantly Douglass reveals the real problem in slavery, which is the destructive nature of intolerance and the need for change. Douglass refers many times to the dehumanizing effects sla...
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.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave: A Perspective on the Evils of Slavery
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. The Classic Slave Narratives. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York: New American Library, 1987. 243-331.
Douglass, Frederick. “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.” The Classic Slave Narratives. Ed. Henry Louis Gates Jr. New York: Penguin Group, 1987.
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2003.
Douglass, Frederick "Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave" The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1998
The Autobiography of Frederick Douglass gives a first person perspective on the life of a slave in the rural south and the city. Frederick Douglass was able to read and think about the evils of slavery and the reasons for its abolishment. Throughout his autobiography Frederick Douglass talks of the many ways a slave and master would be corrupted by the labor system. The master justified his actions through a self-serving religion and a conscience belief that slaves were meant to be in their place. Frederick Douglass noticed that in order to maintain the slaves belief in this system the master had to resort to trickery of a slaves body and mind.
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.
Let us begin with what is, perhaps, the most famous Douglass quotation: "You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man" (64). This sentence serves as the turning point, the climax, of both Douglass' narrative and his life. Up until that point, throughout his entire life, the world had been busy making him a slave. From the moment he was born to a slave mother (even though his father was white), the forces of slavery had been suffocating his humanity. When he was forcibly separated from his mother, he lost the human closeness of family. When he helplessly witnessed his aunt being brutally beaten and was subjected to repeated beatings himself, he lost the human sense of pride. And, when he was denied education and literacy, he lost the human ability to obtain knowledge. In all of these ways, society turned Frederick Douglass, a man, int...
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.
...understanding of freedom. By exposing the wrongs done to slaves, Douglass greatly contributed to the abolitionist movement. He also took back some of the power and control from the slaveholders, putting it in the hands of the enslaved.
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.