Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass Essay

“You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man” (Pg 64). Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is book written by Douglass himself. Douglass writes about the crime he was witness and victim to as a slave. He talks about his experience as a freeman looking back at his slave life. The different events in his life like leaving the plantation, learning the truth about literacy, crimes he witnessed, the law that turned a blind eye to the cruelty he was victim to and his duty as a former slave to educate the people who were oblivious to the life slave were forced to live. The events that led Douglass to write the book were the events where he learned something that helped him escape slavery figuratively and literally. Also, where he witnessed and was victim to the cruelty of slavery. Frederick Douglass was an abolitionist leader, journalist and author who was born on 1818, Douglass guessed it to be 1817, in Talbot County, Maryland. He was born into slavery and stayed a slave until his escape at the age of 20. Many events led Douglass to realize his situation as a slave. His real name was Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey but changed it to Frederick Douglass in order to stay hidden from the people he escaped from and the people who might send him back to his slave life. During the antebellum period there was law called Fugitive state law that stated that if slave escape from his slaveholder. Slave if captured or found must be returned to the slave owner because legally they were property of the slaveholder. Douglass did not who his father was, it was believed to be a white man, and his mother who he was separated from him as an infant as Douglass writes, “frequently before the child has reached its twelfth month, its mother is taken away from it,” (pg17). This caused him to not have an emotional attachment to the plantation he lived as a kid. He writes before his departure “it was not home for me, I could not feel that I was leaving any thing which I could have enjoyed by staying. Therefore, when he was moved to a Mr. Auld place he did not break down emotionally. Because if he had broken down he would not have in his eyes found the “plans to gain my freedom.”(Douglass, pg 87) When Douglass is seven or eight he told that he will leave the plantation because he is being given away to Mr. Hugh Auld who lives in Baltimore. This was a major event in his life that led him to write the Narrative. Douglass considered his departure from the plantation as “a most interesting event in” (pg 39) his life. He thinks this way he thinks that if he had not been removed from the plantation “today, instead of being seated on my own table , in the enjoyment of freedom and the happiness of home, writing this Narrative, been confined in the galling chain of slavery.”(Douglass, Pg 39) The reason for this is because after arriving at Mr. Auld house he meets Auld’s wife, Sophia Auld, she was “a women of the kindest heart and finest feelings” (Douglass, pg 40). While working under Mrs. Auld she starts to teach Douglass A, B, C and spelling of the two and three letter long words. When Mr. Auld finds out that Mrs. Auld is teaching Douglass. He forbids Mrs. Auld from teaching him by telling her …show more content…
He wrote the book in order to tell people about the basic human rights he lacked as a black slave in the south. During his lifetime Douglass had many ups and downs. All the events that he witnessed or was a part of led Douglass to write the book about his life as a slave. After experiencing these events Douglass wrote the book to show the true horrors of slavery to people of north and south. Consequently, try ending slavery that had affected the lives of many people. These events were important to Douglass lead Douglass to right the book because through these events he learned about the horrors of slavery and things that will help him become free of the shackles of