Comparing Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave and Incidents in the Life

     The tone established in the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is unusual in that from the beginning to the end the focus has been shifted. In the beginning of the narrative Douglass seems to fulfill every stereotypical slavery theme. He is a young black slave who at first cannot read and is very naïve in understanding his situation. As a child put into slavery Douglass does not have the knowledge to know about his surroundings and the world outside of slavery. In Douglass’ narrative the tone is first set as that of an observer, however finishing with his own personal accounts.

In Frederick Douglass 's first autobiography, "Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass”, he provides a graphic portrayal of his childhood and disturbing experiences as a slave as well as his eventual escape to freedom. Douglass went through physical abuse, starvation, and mental fatigue during his youth, yet through unimaginable circumstances he was able to overcome everything and become a writer, newspaper editor, and most of all one of the most influential abolitionist. In telling his story, Douglass paints a realistic picture of slavery. Douglass 's narrative spells out the slaveholders ' tactics in simple terms while highlighting the moral inefficiencies and the damaging effects of slavery on both the slave and the slaveholder

In these two tales of brutal bondage, Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Frederick Douglass' Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, the modern reader can decipher two vastly different experiences from circumstances that were not altogether that dissimilar. Both narratives tell the story of a slave gaining his or her freedom from cruel masters, yes, but that is where the most prominent similarities end. Not only are they factually different, these stories are entirely distinct in their themes.

“Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” is an autobiographical work written by abolitionist orator, and former slave, Frederick Douglass. The book covers the early part of Douglass’s life including his time as a slave, his escape, and what he did shortly after becoming a free man. Douglass’s time as a slave heavily influenced his claim that slavery was a morally unacceptable and disgusting practice that stripped away the humanity of the African Americans that were being taken advantage of. Douglass builds an effective argument around appeals to emotion to demonstrate the horridity of slavery.

We can see in both of these two narratives are told using personal stories of their suffering while using other descriptions of other characters to help tell the overall story of the experiences of slaves. Douglass give us many examples of the many horrible way the slave masters and slaves overseers treated their slaves. By showing us the violent killing and beating of slaves by the overseers without even being help responsible for it. One of these

In their narratives Frederick Douglass’ and Harriet Jacobs’ recount the agony they have gone through in a slaveholding society, where gender played a deceiving role during the captiva-tion. For slaves it was impossible to achieve designated stereotypical roles of the sexes, respec-tively for male and female, as the only officially recognized gender at that time. While Harriet Jacobs was restricted in her aspire for freedom due to her role conflict as mother and slave, Fred-erick Douglass seems distant to family matters and focused on getting his independence and pride back with education and resistance. Both were constrained to follow the general pictures default to fit the American culture and the norms set by society towards gender throughout their captivation as slaves. Yet, these specific examples of their life are despite their differences, very similar in their desires.

“You are a product of your environment.”- W. Clement. The way you were raised, the people who raised you and the community that you are raised in all play a role in who you are as an individual. Constantly throughout time the way an individual defines themselves is based on their roots, the actions or reactions that have built a foundation of who they’re today. Through the lens of a slave later turned into one of the largest faces of abolitionist acts, Frederick Douglass creates “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” in which he accounts the community he was raised in and the constant fear instilled within his community as well as his later assimilation into new communities and possibly being responsible for creation of a

Fredrick was always troubled by the lack of information slaves knew about themselves. He didn’t have an identity beyond knowing he was born a slave. “By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs, and is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant.” (217) Although, this information was not peeve to slaves nevertheless, it was a source of unhappiness for Douglass. In addition, Fredrick like most slaves never developed a relationship with his mother. He was certain it was deliberate on the part of the master, “to hinder the development of the child’s affection to mother, and to blunt and destroy the

There are many children in the world today that hate school and wish they didn’t have to go, but years ago to these two kids school meant everything to them but sadly they couldn’t go. One being a black slave and the other, a blind and deaf girl. As a black slave you would never be allowed to learn anything, and being blind and deaf, well that’s self-explanatory. Even though they had those troubles, they let nothing stop them. Both "The Story of My Life" and “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave" share the central idea of powering through their struggles so they can gain knowledge, but they do so in different ways.

“My mother and I were separated when I was but an infant—before I knew her as my 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…I never saw my mother, to know her as such, more than four or five times in my life; and each of these times was very short in duration, and at night.”

During the final years of legal slave ownership in the United States, the slave narrative became a popular way for literate enslaved people to express their anti-slavery stance through their own testimony. Two of the most influential writers on the slave narrative topic were the autobiographical authors Fredrick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs. Since Douglas and Jacobs were both born in a similar time period, there are many similarities found in their works. Douglass’s Narrative of the life of Fredrick Douglass, an American Slave is closely comparable to Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl when analyzing how they represented their enslavement in their autobiographies. The two authors have similar ideas when portraying their struggles with forced ignorance. Their writing also contains parallels with the corrupting power of slavery for the slave owners, as well as the parallels in pointing out the hypocrisies of using the bible to defend slavery. These similarities can be explained in part due to Douglass and Jacobs following the same basic slave narrative outline to maintain the shared goal of abolishing slavery in the United States.

The experiences, memories and treatment in any situation are viewed upon differently between a man and a woman. Obvious in the case of slavery, the two sexes were treated differently and so therefore their recollections of such events were-different. In the following short essay, we look closely at the perspective of the female slave, Harriet Jacobs in “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”, and respectfully compared to that of a man slave, Frederick Douglass in “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”. Although both experienced their freedoms despite facing great

Fittingly, they treated the slaves as if their family bonds were completely worthless – something they would never have imagined doing to a white man. This is illustrated through Douglass's relationship with his own mother, Harriet Bailey, whom he was separated from as an infant. As Douglass reminisced, "very little communication ever took place between us…I was not allowed to be present during her illness, at her death, or burial…I received the tidings of her death with much the same emotions I should have probably felt at the death of a stranger" (26). This passage depicts how the slaveholders became so convinced of the worthlessness of the slaves that they saw no reason to respect the vital bond between a mother and child. Consequently, the slaves' view of family fell askew. Although Douglass appeared to know that his mother was important and desired a relationship with her, her passing clearly did not ever sadden him. He also showed no affection for his brother and sisters, as he lacked the necessary interactions with them needed to form familial bondage. Additionally, slaveholders expressed extreme animosity towards the slave families by raping slave women, impregnating them, and then encouraging their white children to whip their half-black siblings. As a result of the dehumanizing behavior that slavery presents, slaves not only suffered and lost all of their freedoms, but also lost their entire family lives, which the slaveholders deemed necessary to

     Not only does the slave concept of time reflect the desire of the “masters’” to have the slaves view time in terms of work, but it also reflects the “masters’” refusals to allow slaves to define themselves historically. Douglass writes that slaves were unable to articulate their ages, the dates of births and deaths of family members, and their lengths of service. He is also unable to form his identity based on

Patrick Henry once said, “give me liberty, or give me death.” In the eyes of Frederick Douglass and countless others enslaved, this took on a much deeper meaning to them. “It was doubtful liberty at most, and almost certain death is we failed.” [51] Frederick Douglass was one of the most commonly known slaves to have existed. Slavery has been around since the 1700s, but the subject of slavery is controversial because it not only includes information written from former slaves, but information acquired from historians. The question that has with stood the test of time is, “are these encounters that have been written out, exaggerated or the whole truth and nothing but the truth?” In the early 1800’s Frederick Douglass was born in Tuckahoe, Maryland, and grew up on Colonial Edward Lloyd’s plantation. Children would be separated from their mothers before they were twelve months in age-Frederick too was separated from his mother. As a result of entering slave-hood at an early age, he did not know his birthdate (like most slaves). Frederick Douglass’s account on slavery could be seen as biased as a result of first hand experiences with being held as a slave. Although, Douglass is able to be direct our thoughts to these experiences in such a light, you feel as if you are witnessing it happen right before you. Because of Douglass’s quest for freedom, his daring attitude, and determination to learn, he shows us the way through American Slavery in his eyes. Douglass provides