Essay Comparing Frederick Douglass And Jacobs

A few extremely detailed accounts of a slave’s life exist because slaves were not allowed to write. However, some slaves were taught or learned how to read and write while they were still slaves. Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs gave their account of their slave life in Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave and Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Both Douglass and Jacobs believed slavery to be a curse and a demon, but had different experiences with slavery.
Douglass grew up in a home where his mother was taken from him when he was an infant. He did the field work, mostly because he was a man, the work was exceedingly difficult. When he was young, he would see how cruelly his master and overseer treated their slaves. He said that his master was not a humane slaveholder. Douglass had several cruel masters, one was Mr. Severe. “He seemed to take pleasure in manifesting his fiendish barbarity.” Another cruel master was Mr. Gore, “His savage barbarity was equalled only by the consummate coolness with which he committed the grossest and
Douglass, especially, was very detailed and graphic in how he saw masters treating their slaves. Douglass and Jacobs both described how exhausting and arduous it was to be a slave, but Jacobs went deeper to describe more how she felt inside. She also matured and strengthened in her response to slavery, “Whatever slavery might do to me, it could not shackle my children...it is always better to trust than to doubt.” Jacobs and Douglass both responded similar to escaping from slavery. Jacobs said, “...slavery had made me suspicious of every body.” Douglass said, “I was afraid to speak to anyone for fear of speaking to the wrong one, and thereby falling into the hands of money-loving kidnappers...the motto which I adopted when I started from slavery was this - ‘Trust no