Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

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The years preceding the American Civil War were rife with tensions between the South and the North. The abolitionist movement was gaining popularity, and slaveholders were being increasingly criticised. A number of slaves who had managed to escape their masters were writing autobiographies, denouncing the treatment to which they were submitted. One of them was Frederick Douglass, who published the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave – Written by Himself in May 1845, seven years after his escape to the North. The passage I will discuss in this essay is taken from Chapter IX.

In his Narrative, Frederick Douglass takes a look back on his life in slavery. He begins by writing about his birth and goes on to tell the reader about his life, in a chronological order. He writes mostly in the first person, and sometimes uses ’we’: ’We seldom called him ”master”...’. In Chapter IX, Douglass is approximately fifteen years old and is still held captive as a slave. Obviously, using ’they’ would not have been correct: the group of slaves he is referring to included him. Douglass, even though he is now emancipated, does not distance himself from the slaves he once worked with. He uses ’we’ as a solidarity marker.

As mentioned above, Douglass was not the only escaped slave writing an autobiography. Other slave narratives include the Narrative of Henry Watson, a Fugitive Slave (1848) and The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada (1849) (Andrews 1986). This genre was ruled by conventions: it was believed that such autobiographies should be purely factual, and not contain any interpretations or mentions of feelings. John A. Collins, the general agent of the Massachussetts Anti-Slavery Society, is reported to have said: ”Give us the facts, we will take care of the philosophy” (Moses 1990: 66).

Douglass followed these conventions to an extent, as can be seen in the passage: he includes some facts, such the name of his master, and the date and place of his master’s conversion. However, this passage also shows that he could not be entirely confined to these limits. It is filled with opinions (’he was an object of contempt’), assumptions (’Our want of reverence for him must have perplexed him greatly’), recollections of how he felt at the time (’I was disappointed in both these respects’) and interpretations (’it made him more cruel and hateful in all his ways’). This affects how readers interpret what they read: it puts the facts in context, so that the readers not only learn the events of Douglass’ life, but also how they should feel about them (Andrews 1986). This was typical of Douglass’ style, which was encouraged by his sponsor, the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison: ”Mr. Douglass has very properly chosen to write his own Narrative, in his own style... rather than someone else’s” (from Douglass 2001: 6). This does not mean that Douglass wrote completely freely, though: as Moses (1990) puts it, slave narratives are a form of propaganda. Garrison’s expectations, as well as those of other liberals and abolitionists, shaped Douglass’ autobiography. Later in his life, Douglass decided to leave the Garrisonians behind to pursue his own goals and literary style.

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An issue that Douglass had to deal with is the one of credibility. People today would probably be more inclined to believe a biography if it was told by the protagonist himself, than if it was written by a third party. In the 1840s, the situation was different. In the North, even though the abolitionist movement was gaining ground, there was some prejudice against free Blacks (Sundquist 1990). It was important to try to avoid accusations of story fabrication. By giving details such as place names, dates and names of people, as he does in the extract, Douglass made his ...

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