Frederick Douglass Narrative Essay

In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, written by Frederick Douglass himself, is a story of Douglass’ courageous journey through the dark and wretched period of slavery, acting as almost as the slavery’s version of The Diary of Anne Frank. Douglass, a former slave, had an utmost strong desire to acquire the knowledge of literacy—the ability to read and write. In Chapter 6, Douglass overheard a discussion between different white men speaking about how that literacy would allow the slaves to understand their condition and make controlling them a seemingly impossible job for the slave-masters to deal with. With this knowledge in mind, Douglass decided to “set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost

7, pg. 39), which allowed him to fully comprehend the horrors of what he was going through and take the proper steps to escape his Hell. Information about Douglass’ family is not well-known, but in Chapter 5, Douglass provided information about his poor mother, saying “my mother and I were separated when I was but an infant -- before I knew her as my mother” (Ch. 1, pg. 2). Then, much later, Douglass explained much more about his family, stating, “I had two sisters and one brother, that lived in the same house with me; but the early separation of us from our mother had well nigh blotted the fact of our relationship from our memories” (Ch. 5, pg. 31). Other slaves that he met throughout his journey became a family, but nothing will replace the family that he never had to fully take blessing in. Like all slaves, Douglass worked like that of a cattle; however, in Chapter 5, when Douglass was a small child, he was regarded as “not old enough to work in the field, and there being little else than field work to do” (Ch. 5, pg. 29), and with this, he actually spent a lot of his time

2, pg. 14). He uses his former experience with former master Colonel Lloyd to emotionally appeal, the use of pathos, to the reader that slavery is not something that should be supported whatsoever because it would horrify the very fabric of their existence, both of which, if taken into perspective, would counter any supporting statements for slavery. Douglass shows that the Southern argument for slavery is incredibly invalid by expertly showing how that supporters for slavery have not lived in the fragile bodies of the slaves who worked tirelessly and, sometimes, towards their unfortunate deaths, stating that their supporting stances would turn right around if they experienced a mere day in the hellhole that he experienced, if the person had a soul at all. Stating that the idea of slavery was a “system of fraud and inhumanity of slavery” (Ch. 10, pg. 77) that dressed in “robes already crimsoned with the blood of millions, and even now feasting itself greedily upon our own flesh” (Ch. 10, pg. 85), Douglass described the mere concept of slavery as a dreadful and malignant demon that seeks to destroy