Frederick Douglass Characteristics

Frederick Douglass was an African American slave in the time of 1800s. Frederick wrote a book called the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Throughout the book he talked about how he had a very tough life but because he had many good characteristics he was able to overcome many of the hardships that he faced. He had to live with extremely bad living conditions and in immense pain on the plantation. Frederick Douglass fought through every problem that he faced in his life and the only reason why he overcame them is because he had the will to succeed, he had determination, and he had perseverance.
The first trait that Douglass displayed in his life was his determination. Frederick says ‘’Just at this point in my progress, Mr. Auld found out what was going on and at once forbade Mrs. Auld to instruct me further, telling her among other things that teaching a slave to read and write was wrong.” (36). Mrs. Auld was teaching Frederick how to read and write, which back then was a bad thing to do because if your slaves could understand what you were saying they could find ways to escape. Frederick …show more content…
Douglass says that “In moments of agony, I envied my fellow slaves for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a beast.” (43). Frederick was living under very poor living conditions and because of this the slaves would be worked all day long with barely any rest, and would still be expected to be able to repeat the same steps and do the same things with the same amount of effort they used the day before. This was obviously unfair but that was what they had to do and with no questions asked or else they would be whipped. Frederick also wanted to learn to read and write so then he could escape but on top of all this work it was often hard for him to learn. So he had to use his perseverance a lot so then he could overcome the pain and the suffering he was in at the time so he could learn to