Frederick Douglass Narrative

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass takes the reader through Douglass’s life during, and after his brute path with slavery. Douglass’s autobiography gives insight on the multitude of ways in which African American’s suffered under the bondage of slavery in the south. Within the page, Douglass intertwines his thoughts on religion, education, and freedom with those of the hardship, pain, and hopelessness that drove him into the abolition figure that he is today.

The narrative begins with showing the “dehumanizing character of slavery,” (53) and how it placed physical and emotional shackles on the lives of colored people in the 1800s. Douglass shows within the first chapter, how slavery resulted in the lack of natural affection between

At the beginning of the book, Douglass was a slave in both body and mind. He was born into slavery on Colonel Lloyd's plantation, but as a child, he never experienced the worst kinds of suffering. He witnessed his Aunt Hester be beaten so he knows what hardships a slave goes through, but he is too young to experience these hardships himself. Instead, he suffers without really knowing it. The real growth of his character began in the second stage of his life, when seven-year-old Douglass was sent to work for a new set of masters in Baltimore. Baltimore was a completely different world for him, with many new experiences, but the most important thing he learned there was the power of education. His abolitionist spark came from one overheard lecture between his master and mistress, the words “learning would spoil the best nigger in the world” (84) is what turned Douglass into a man powered by the want of liberty and freedom. Teaching himself how to read and write, Douglass became the definition of a self-educated man. In his time of despair instead of doing off with himself like he thought of, Douglass began to yearn for the word “slavery” to fall off of a person’s lips, “eager to hear any

Once Douglass actually understood the word abolition, “the light broke in upon [him] by degrees” (99) and that is when the eagerness to be free black in the north came upon him. As Douglass became a young man, he started fighting to actually be free. After this, Douglass bounced from master to master, but was still always on the lookout for a way to escape to freedom. Amongst this time, Douglass taught slaves and instilled education wherever he rested. He served as an engine of hope amongst his fellow slaves, and represented the “improper and impertinent… restless spirit” (36), which every colored person in the south longed to be. Eventually, after a failed attempt, Douglass escaped, he escaped the only life he knew for freedom that was not even promised upon his arrival. Still he was full of determination and when he finally got to the north, he described his feeling as a "moment of the highest excitement [he had]