The Life Of Frederick Douglass And Harriet Ann Jacobs

In this paper I will compare the writings of Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass. I will touch on their genre, purpose, content, and style. Both authors were born into slavery. Both escaped to freedom and fought to bring an end to slavery, each in their own way. Both Jacobs and Douglass have a different purpose for their writings.

Published in 1845, ‘Narrative of life of Frederick Douglass an American slave written by himself’ is still the most highly acclaimed American autobiography ever written. It was published seven years after Douglass escaped from his life as a slave in Maryland. It describes his experience of being slave and his psychological insights into the slave-master relationship. The main focus is on ‘How he learn to read and write ‘and ‘the pain of slavery.’ The goal of this paper is to bring more insight analysis of his narrative life through the most famous two chapter’s in which he defines, “How he learn to read and write” and “The pain of slavery.” To achieve this goal, the paper is organized into four main sections. First, author background and

Since the beginning of writing, literature has played a pivotal role in shaping the history of the world. The same holds true when referring to the early American history topic of slavery. Many abolitionists wrote in hopes that their views will persuade people in America to take a stand against slavery. While there were many authors that led the anti-slavery movement, the most successful writers were the slaves that lived through this atrocious time period and were able to recall their experiences. Two prominent authors during this time period were Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs. While the two writers shared many common experiences due to their time being a slave, they also had had a variety of differences. Harriet Jacobs wrote mostly wrote in a way that appealed to people’s emotions and focused on what a woman goes through as a slave; whereas Douglass focused on freedom and manhood.

Slavery was an embarrassing time in America’s history. In 2016, slavery has become a distant memory. It’s easy for us to admit that slavery is wrong but, in Frederick Douglass’s time no one thought that it was. Frederick Douglass went on to write books and give speeches in hope that one day all slaves would be free. In the book called “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, he attempts to shine light on the American Slave system in the 1800’s.

Slavery (noun): a condition compared to that of a slave in respect of exhausting labor or restricted freedom. Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass were both born into slavery, and both suffered the consequences of American ignorance. Jacobs and Douglass provided a brutally honest truth through their poetry about slavery, and how white Americans interpreted slavery. Everyone was subject to Jacobs and Douglass’ assessment on how differently people interpreted what slavery meant – just a means of labor – in both the free Northern states and the rural South. It was their goal to illuminate the brutality of slavery, and how important abolishing slavery was.

Farming and building houses on plantations in extreme heat from the beating sun without water does not sound enticing to anyone with the modern technological amenities available in today's world. However, slaves all around the world were subjected to harsh treatment and grueling tasks like these throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. As a way of spreading accounts of these miserable lifestyles, slaves Frederick Douglass and Olaudah Equiano documented their horrifying experiences and published accounts of them. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano highlight the cruelty towards slaves during the era of realism. Although these autobiographies contain many similarities

“The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” is often told with a harsh and unemotional tone; it is this euphemistic style that gives the reader a keen insight into the writer's epoch as a slave in Maryland during the early 1800’s. Douglass never let us forget that his narrative was true, he wanted the readers to understand the truth that was Douglass's life, in addition the symbols and allusions that populate this book showing the intelligence and sophistication of the writer, while the detached writing also gives the reader another look into that time’s attitude and into Douglass’s own perception.

Although Douglass and Jacobs' experiences support the "personal as political', their narratives further explore the residual effects of slavery: 1) to prohibit the identity of male and female slave, and 2) to marginalize the slave's presence in society.

Men and Women’s treatment has been different as long as the two have been around to notice the difference. Even in the realm of slavery women and men were not treated the same although both were treated in horrible ways. Harriet Jacobs and Fredrick Douglass’ story is very similar both were born into slavery and later rose above the oppression to become molders of minds. In time of subjugation to African Americans these two writers rose up and did great things especially with their writing. Both Douglass and Jacobs’ experienced different types of slavery, it shaped their perspective on everything and it also shows the importance of their freedom.

At first glance, the book “my bondage and my freedom by Frederick Douglass appeared to be extremely dull and frustrating to read. After rereading the book for a second time and paying closer attention to the little details I have realized this is one of the most impressive autobiographies I have read recently. This book possesses one of the most touching stories that I have ever read, and what astonishes me the most about the whole subject is that it's a true story of Douglass' life. “ Douglass does a masterful job of using his own experience to expose the injustice of slavery to the world. As the protagonist he is able to keep the reader interested in himself, and tell the true story of his life. As a narrator he is able to link those

Harriet Jacobs, a black woman who escapes slavery, illustrates in her biography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) that death is preferable to life as a slave due to the unbearable degradation of being regarded as property, the inevitable destruction of slave children’s innocence, and the emotional and physical pain inflicted by slave masters. Through numerous rhetorical strategies such as allusion, comparison, tone, irony, and paradoxical expression, she recounts her personal tragedies with brutal honesty. Jacobs’s purpose is to combat the deceptive positive portrayals of slavery spread by southern slave holders through revealing the true magnitude of its horrors. Her intended audience is uninvolved northerners, especially women, and she develops a personal and emotionally charged relationship with them.

From the import and enslavement of Africans to the mass movement and genocide of a multitude of Native peoples, the captivity and enslavement of these peoples are among the worst travesties in the history of the United States of America. In Mary Rowlandson’s “A Narrative of Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson”, she writes autobiographically about the Native American raid on her village, the capture of herself and others including her children and other relatives, the way she was treated by her captors, and her eventual release back into English custody. Next, we have excerpts from “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” by Frederick Douglass. Douglass’s account of his life as a slave in the American south showed how horrendous

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.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, brings to light many of the social injustices that colored men, women, and children all were forced to endure throughout the nineteenth century under Southern slavery laws. Douglass's life-story is presented in a way that creates a compelling argument against the justification of slavery. His argument is reinforced though a variety of anecdotes, many of which detailed strikingly bloody, horrific scenes and inhumane cruelty on the part of the slaveholders. Yet, while Douglas’s narrative describes in vivid detail his experiences of life as a slave, what Douglass intends for his readers to grasp after reading his narrative is something much more profound. Aside from all the

write. Douglass uses irony and a sense of unawareness in his narrative to describe "the toils of women through his aunt’s afflictions but failed...to accurately address and interpret," (James 34) these strategies attempt to validate his role as a "fugitive American slave narrator, seeking a written document to prove that"(James 27) he has obviously suggested through language the free territory he claims. The connection for Douglass between the wanting of literacy and personal worth is what he focuses on primarily throughout the narrative. Douglass establishes himself as a man who is deserving of freedom, and that itself is a major significance to other slave narratives. This generalization doesn't extend to the slave narrative written by Harriet Jacobs who focuses on the brutality that women slaves face compared to men slaves. She states many times the fact that women slaves are degraded and treated "less than there worth." (Jacobs 29)