Frederick Douglass Bildungsroman Analysis

Fredrick Douglass narrative brings insight into the many events that occurred during his life that impacted the changes that were to come to him in the future. This narrative is his autobiography but can also be known as a Bildungsroman type of autobiography that we had discussed in class. Bildungsroman is a considered a coming of age story for a male that involves intellectual, emotional, and artistic freedom (Jackson). Throughout each chapter of this narrative, we can understand the feelings and ideas Douglass was experiencing as a slave that shows the true extent of what happened on these plantations just like many other slaves. The structure of this narrative is set up as the years Douglass had spent on different slave masters' estates.

As a young boy, Douglass did not get treated like many of the other slaves but still did experience the same things they had. When he was born, he was taken away from his mother and only met her a couple of times. He states this was done to slaves "to hinder the development of the child's affection toward its mother and to blunt and destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child" (Douglass 714). From this statement, we can see that the primary goal was to make sure slaves were not on the same level of whites by taking out the nurturing aspects of what babies are supposed to endure by letting them be raised by others to obtain a mental of abandonment. Unlike many other slaves, Douglass life on the plantation was a little different than those of other slaves. Douglass at the beginning of his narrative mostly talks about events that did not particularly happen to him on his first two plantations but overall impacted all slaves because it happened anywhere. Douglass was not old enough to work on this plantation since he was a child, so many of these events were by sight but did not happen to him. He barely was whipped and treated better than most slaves. On his first plantation he, Douglass witnessed his aunt being repeatedly beaten by his first master prepared him for what was to come on

After analyzing these significant events that had happened in Douglass life, the overall purpose of writing this autobiography was not to explain to people how he achieved freedom but to showcase how different scenarios that had occurred at these plantations did not define him as a person but shaped him into the person he had become. Slavery was something that broke the spirit of people mentally, physically, and emotionally that may have caused to them to not seek hope in a better outcome of life. Douglass was able to become a free slave and accomplished man after he enslavement. He never hindered on the fact that he was once a slaved but used these events to his benefit to make a successful career. Secondly, Fredrick Douglass narrative depicts that although terrible things happened on these plantations, he wanted readers to be able to read all the violence that occurred to show them how real and horrifying slavery was. Many people may not have been able to write about this stuff because they were afraid to publish it especially since blacks were also supposed, to tell the truth about the horrors on plantations. Reading Douglass real accounts in this narrative gives readers an accurate understanding the slave system that resulted in cruel treatment of a group of people. Frederick Douglass was