In the autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas, an American Slave, Douglas reinforces the universal human condition of freedom through syntax, figurative language, and selection of detail. This is demonstrated in the third paragraph, which makes it stand out.…
From Slavery To freedom by John Hope Franklin, in chapter 7 the first topic that was brought up was King Cotton. In the domestic slave trade, which took place from 1808-1865. It talked about how technology supported expansion of slave labor. Eli Whitney`s 1794 intervention of the cotton gin. In Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama rapidly grew with the demand for cotton and sugarcane. Growing prosperity in new states caused wave of migrants and greater demand for slaves. This demand resulted in: acquisition of Florida, admission of Missouri as slave state, annexation of Texas, and war of Mexico.…
Douglass begins by telling us he was born into slavery in Maryland, his mother’s name was Harriet Bailey, and he was separated from her at birth. He reveals he is not sure how old he is and that his father was a white man rumored to be his first master. He was later sent to Baltimore where his new master’s wife began to teach him to read. His Master Hugh found out and put a stop to it insisting Douglass would become unmanageable and unhappy. When Douglass heard this he realized that the lock on the bonds of slavery was ignorance, and education was his key to freedom. Eventually he succeeded in teaching himself to read and write with help from his white friends. After educating himself he developed a better understanding of slavery and began to regard his enslavers as wicked. When he is sent to be broken by Mr. Covey he is whipped on a regular basis and almost loses hope, but he ends up fighting back regaining confidence in himself. Douglas marks this as a turning point and vows never to be whipped again. Later, Douglass learns the trade of caulking, has a disagreement with his master over wages, attempts another escape and succeeds in reaching New York…
His master had kept Fredrick a slave for most of his life. He had no way of being social or living life like he had wanted. Fredrick had dreamed of being a free man and living in Baltimore. Whipped daily and barely fed, Douglass was "broken in body, soul, and spirit." Not only was he treated horrible physically, he had mentally been missing out on education needed as time went on. Finally, Douglass reestablishes a sense of self and justice through his struggles and had escaped to freedom the second time.…
Frederick Douglass has finally managed to run away from one of his masters to become a free slave, but yet he feels fear and paranoia. As he runs away, he contemplates all the possibilities of him getting caught by slaveholders or even turned in by his own kind. And it upsets him having to pass all the houses and food, but he has no shelter and starves with no food. This in fact heightens the intensity of his fear and paranoia because he is more likely to be caught with no where to hide and having no energy to run because he is starving. In The Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass, he utilizes things such as parallel syntactic structure, paradoxes, figurative language, and caesuras to help portray his feeling of built up unease and terror.…
Douglass has a great advantage in appealing to his audience as majority of his readers may be less familiarized with the setting of a plantation, and more familiar with the setting of a city, which allows them to relate to his story more. However, Douglass has a good idea of what it means to have to relate and conform to a foreign life, as an escaped slave. He discusses his new life as a freedman in the narrative, and especially how the cuts of slavery still sting and run deep in his life. He feels as if he is unable to be at peace if so many he knows are still living lives of undecided servitude at the will of cruel masters, and that he will never be able to adapt to society this way. To represent his feelings to the reader, he occasionally writes of incidents where he felt out of place in his new society, and he occasionally vents to the reader of what it feels like to live in such a dramatically different way. Stating a long list of perilous situations he finds comfortably comparable to slavery, he writes, “Let him be a fugitive slave in a strange land--a land given up to be the hunting-ground for slaveholders--whose inhabitants are legalized kidnappers--where he is every moment subjected to the terrible liability of being seized upon by his…
He educated himself and became determined to escape the horror of slavery. He attempted to escape slavery once, but failed. He later made a successful escape in 1838. Frederick's life as a slave had the greatest impact on his writings. Through slavery, he was able to develop the necessary emotion and experiences for him to become a successful abolitionist writer. He grew up as a slave, experiencing all of the hardships that are included, such as whippings, scarce meals, and other harsh treatment. His thirst for freedom, and his burning hatred of slavery caused him to write Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, and other similar biographies. In his Narrative, he wrote the complete story of his miserable life as a slave and his strife to obtain freedom. The main motivational force behind his character (himself) was to make it through another day so that someday he might see freedom. The well written books that he produced were all based on his life. They all started with Douglass coping with slavery. He had a reason to write these works. As a die-hard abolitionist, He wanted to show the world how bad slavery really…
First of all, Frederick Douglass was able to escape slavery because he always longed for more in life. The beginning of Douglass’s…
His autobiography caused eyes to open to the true nature of slavery and greatly impacted the awareness of the public. Being a firsthand account of slavery, A Narrative of the Life... tugs at a reader more deeply than any fictional account, such as Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (although another influential book) ever could (Kohn 509). In addition, Douglass was the first to make a published account of his earlier life’s story and his descriptions of the emotional effects of slavery are evident of the careful thought and observation he took in writing it. Douglass’s Narrative of the Life... sold 30,000 copies in a few years and had a very large impact on American society due to the wide acceptance of the ideas he posed -- the general public seemed to appreciated his blaming of the institution and not its founders (Goldstein 470). Douglass ought to be given credit for the majority of the public shift from fighting against other humans to fighting against the corruption of an…
Frederick Douglass was many things; he was a former slave, abolitionist, and impressive writer. Despite having his early years plagued by abuse and hardships like any other slave, he was able to overcome these hardships and was able to become a free slave by escape. What sets him apart from other slaves however, is that he was able to write with such power and become an example for his people. This is reflected in his autobiography, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. As Douglass recounts the story of his years as a slave and his journey to escape the hold of his masters he uses rhetorical strategies such as metaphors, personification, and polysyndetons to give the reader of his story a vivid description of what his life was like when he was still a slave.…
The most explicit theme of the reading that stood out to me was racism in the form of slavery in the southern United States. Throughout the narrative, Douglass included excellent examples of how slaves are dehumanized, mentally and physically, by the slave system. In many ways, slavery and segregation were the main obstacles in his personality growth. One of the most powerful lines in the narrative was in chapter ten, when Douglass directly addresses the relationship between slavery and the denial of manhood when he says, ''You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.’’ Because slavery was bound up in denying full selfhood to both men and women, many slaves were denied the ability to perceive themselves as full human beings. Not only by the people but also by the science. The introduction of psychological thinking into the Jim Crow South produced neither a clear victory for racial equality nor a single-minded defense of traditional…
To be an educated black or colored man was rare in the 1800’s, so rare it could cost a black man his life. For Douglass to become an abolitionist was truly amazing seeing that the odds were not in his favor. Douglass put his life in danger many times and face many obstacles to become the educated man he was. With the help of Abraham Lincoln, Douglass helped in the writing of the Emancipation Proclamation to free and abolish slavery in all America. In the autobiography My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass, he shows that education incarcerates him by limiting him to learn more, keeping quiet about what he knows, and that his knowledge could have devastating consequences.…
“Freedom” a text written in English 363, and a literary analysis of the autobiography of Frederick Douglas, examines the use of literary elements (Formalism approach) that conveys Douglas’ wish for freedom from slavery and addresses the human condition for freedom. Frederick Douglas the author of, “Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave” writes about his wish for freedom from slavery during the 1800’s. Frederick Douglas begins his life with a good master, who allows him to become literate, but a change in owners leads to cruel treatment and then he seeks his freedom from slavery. Douglass in his poem to the ships reflects upon one Sunday afternoon like many other Sundays when he is off from work and near the water…
He still had the title of a slave rather than a free man. For Douglass being free required action of being gallant and to execute that courageous behavior. As Douglass described, “I talked to them (other slaves) of our want of manhood, if we submitted to our enslavement without at least one noble effort to be free”. To access his words, Douglass wanted to earn his freedom by implementing a courageous plan to be free and that was a sense of manhood for him because to achieve your manhood, an individual must make a noble effort and an act of valiancy to grasp their manhood. When Douglass wanted to escape to the bay with his fellow slaves, we see that Douglass had portrayed his manhood when he had the responsibility over the success of his plan and said, “I probably felt more anxious than the rest, because I was, by common consent, at the head of the whole affair” (Douglass 52). Responsibility can also be a factor for being a man as that requires pressure and taking charge of the plan and situation for himself and others. Only a man can think and make a plan like Douglass, while a slave would be hopeless and thoughtless about such things. Douglass explained that, “to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one….and he can be brought to that only when he ceases to be a man” (Douglass…
"The very first mental effort that I now remember on my part was an attempt to solve the mysterywhy am I a slave?" Douglass uses this question as a very strong introduction to his explanation and justification of why he ran away. He goes on to describe the way he felt each time he heard the cries of the slave-women as they were whipped and beaten. He describes how he ran to the corner of the fence and would weep in fear. This makes a strong…