narrative of Frederick Douglass

The “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,” seeks to enlighten and, inform readers about slavery first hand through the eyes of Frederick Douglass. Douglass not being the only freed slave to write an autobiography, but his work being considered one of the most accurate and authentic. Douglass uses his writing to demonstrate what events happen due to the power abuse of slaveholders over their slaves. Frederick Douglass describes with examples from personal experiences, the tremendous physical and mental destruction slavery has on both slaves, and slave-owners. Douglass provides us with vivid imagery of what actions were taking place during this enslaved period.
Douglass attempts to demonstrate the heart ace he suffered as a child in various ways. He uses the portrayal of enslaved women in his life (his Mother Harriet Bailey, and his Aunt Hester) as indignation towards the institution of slavery. He was a first hand witness to tragedies that in today society would be considered legal offences. As an infant Douglass was immediately forced into slavery and separated form his mother. “It is a common custom, in the part of Maryland from which I ran away, to part children from their mothers at a very early age. Before the child has reached its twelfth month, its mother is taken from it, and hired out on some farm a considerable distance off, and the child is place under the care of an old woman, too old for field labor” (pg.2). When born during the time of slavery if you had an African American mother you were said to be a slave even if your father was a white man. Frederick was lucky that his mother was sold to Mr. Stewart a landowner only twelve miles away. Even though they didn’t spend much time together. Only seeing his mother four times by the time he was seven. “Never having enjoyed, to any considerable extent, her soothing presence, her tender and watchful care, I received the tidings of her death with much the same emotions I should have probably felt