Frederick Douglass Reaction

Personal Reaction to Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is a book that has woken me up from a state I am ashamed to have been in in the first place, especially regarding such a sensitive time in our country’s past: indifference. Collectively, our society today has become desensitized to the heinous atrocity of slavery that those before us fell victim to. As a human being with even the slightest sense of morality, I of course vehemently disapprove of slavery and the values in which it was grounded. However, admittedly, my immediate emotional reaction to the word “slavery” prior to my reading of the book was borderline apathetic because our culture is so far removed from the cruelties that those before us were forced to suffer through. This detachment from the concept of slavery, …show more content…
Douglass does an exemplary job of influencing his readers by using diction to evoke emotion. For instance, he uses phrases like “the galling chains of slavery” (p. 39) to associate slavery with repugnant thoughts. Additionally, I enjoyed getting an entirely first person point of view perspective on the events that transpired in Douglass’s lifetime in contrast to the limited information I’ve been able to gather through school textbooks. In this way, the reader gets to “borrow Douglass’s mind”, and consequently, view a raw, unmitigated account of a slave’s experience. That being said, I would not read this work again. Despite the importance of the book’s messages and Douglass’s impressive storytelling techniques, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass simply lacks a certain je ne sais quoi that makes a truly riveting story, at least from an entertainment