Similarities Between Jacobs And Douglass

1. Douglass opens his novel by talking about the ambiguity he faced in his life as a slave. He didn’t know when he was born, how old he was, or who his father was. Douglass begins the novel this way to exhibit how as a slave, his personhood is marginalized. His marginalized personhood encompasses what it is like to be a slave; and shows how slaves are treated more like property than humans. Because slaves don’t know much about themselves, they are deprived of things that humanize them, such as birthdays.

Douglass developed rhetorical devices such as repetition, antithesis and alluring strategies. He was using an impressive preaching style, as well as rhythms and imagery of biblical texts. In addition, Douglass's genre resembles a classic male myth, a story which follows a youth's development from childhood into manhood. Jacobs, on the other hand, used a writing style which focused on a sentimental novel. This kind of style highlighted womanly chastity, home, family and marriage. This kind of genre was used to show an objection towards a code behavior commanding women staying innocent and humble. Both Douglass and Jacobs used these genres in their narratives to stress issues such as, fighting for what you believe in and addressing critical questions

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.

Frederick Douglass was a North American slave whose environment killed any intellectual stimulus. He was denied all access to knowledge, even that which concerned his own life. Douglass demonstrated his lack of self-understanding when he wrote, "I have no accurate knowledge of my age...By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant" (Douglass 255). This excerpt form Douglass' narrative illustrated how the North American slave was given no opportunity for obtaining an education. These human beings were lowered to the level of beasts under the wicked institution of slavery. Their masters felt that a slave's only means for existence was to serve, therefore, it was only important to know how to perform thier duties. A child growing up in such harsh conditions would surely come to see himself as inferior. There was also an enormous amount of violence a slave had to witness. In Douglass' first encounter with violence he witnessed the beating of his own aunt by the overseer, in which "the louder she

Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass were both slaves that wrote about their struggles and pain during their years of slavery. Both stories were the same but also very different. Both Jacobs and Douglass were born into slavery. The stories were written by authors that finally gained their freedom from slavery. Jacob’s wrote “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” and Frederick Douglass wrote, “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave”. Jacob’s wrote it in a woman point of view and gave us a look at how the women that were slaves experienced life; whereas Douglass wrote as a male slave and the brutality.

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

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave was written by Douglass himself, giving a detailed description of the slaveholders cruelty. Douglass was born in Tuckahoe, Maryland, and he makes known that he does not know his specific birthdate, “... no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it.” (47), but it was approximately around 1818. Once being enslaved, and then escaping in 1838 he became known as an eloquent speaker for abolitionists, being able to deliver passionate speeches about the role of a slaveholder and their relationship to their slaves, especially since he was one of them. Douglass even discovered the true meaning of the songs sung by enslaved people, “ I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meaning of those rude and apparently incoherent songs, I was myself within the circle; so that I neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear.” (27). The book is not an easy read for those who believe in equal rights, as Douglass put into painful words the description of brutal whippings, signs of no mercy, and people being taken advantage of because if they had shown mercy they believed they would have lost their dignity.

     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 "The slave narrative of Frederick Douglas", an underlying theme was that slavery was a dysfunctional system that ironically destroyed masters as well as slaves. The narrators of both narratives were detailing the gruesome truths

What Douglass emphasized in the beginning of his autobiography was he did not know of his age. The reason that I know this is because it was one of the first thing he says in paragraph 1 and continuously restates it in the same paragraph. " I have no accurate knowledge of my age" (paragraph 1, sentence 2) this meaning this information has at least a bit of importance to Douglass, if he states it while introducing himself. Another explanation I have reason to believe this is because, he restates this fact but in a different statement. Such as "I do not remember to have ever met a slave who could tell of his birthday." (Paragraph 1, sentence 4 ) and "The white children could tell their ages. I could not deprived of the same privilege."( Paragraph

Douglass was separated by his mother after she gave life to him and that is when he was introduced into slavery. He stated, "The white children could tell their ages. I could not tell why I ought to be deprived of the same privilege."(1.1) As a child, he felt confused in why he cannot know his own age, which makes him proved to us how slavery is a nonsense institution. Douglass later said, "This is the penalty of telling the truth, of telling the simple truth, in answer to a series of plain questions. (3.5) With this statement we can see how a

Prior to the publication of any slave narrative, African Americans had been represented by early historians’ interpretations of their race, culture, and situation along with contemporary authors’ fictionalized depictions. Their persona was often “characterized as infantile, incompetent, and...incapable of achievement” (Hunter-Willis 11) while the actions of slaveholders were justified with the arguments that slavery would maintain a cheap labor force and a guarantee that their suffering did not differ to the toils of the rest of the “struggling world” (Hunter-Willis 12). The emergence of the slave narratives created a new voice that discredited all former allegations of inferiority and produced a new perception of resilience and ingenuity.

Douglass's descriptions of the severity of slave life are filled with horrific details able to reach even the coldest hearts. The beginning of the narrative tells of how Douglass lacks one of the most celebrated identities of humans - the knowledge of ones own age. "I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen

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

The author of the narrative starts by first giving a vivid description of the protagonist’s birth and the circumstances that surrounded his birth. It is in the introduction that the author informs the readers about the fact that Douglass was born between the years 1817 and 1818, showing that he was not sure about the protagonist’s birth date. During this period, the environment that Frederick was born into is characterized by many cases of slavery. Slave traders used to buy even infant babies so long as they were male. As a result of this, the union between Frederick and his mother, named Harriet was short-lived because they were eventually separated a short period after his birth.