Frederick Douglass: The Hardship Of Being An African-American

It’s a never ending story of fear for an African-American living in the United States during the 1800s. Even if they are residing in a free state, a white, even a black, person is liable to sell them back to the South. Fear is a common friend of African-Americans. In his speech, Frederick Douglass conveys to his audience the hardship of being an African-American, the paranoia that consumes his mind and the weariness emitted due to it.
Douglass refers to himself as a constant prey of the people. He recounts the moments where “[he] was afraid to speak to any one for fear of… falling into the hands of money-loving kidnappers, whose business it was to lie in wait for the panting fugitive, as the ferocious beasts lie in wait for their prey” (37-43).

By comparing the slave-catchers, or anyone in particular, to predators of the wild, Douglass creates an image of himself as a deer in headlights, always restless due an impending danger that can only be prolonged not ceased. He wants his audience to conjure a vivid image through the analogy he is making: a scared African-American man always on the lookout for people who will enslave him once more; a man who looks at people with suspicion and is not able to trust anyone. A predator does not look at its prey in any different way than it’s a meal of the day for them—nothing more, nothing less. Through the analogy of predator and prey, Douglass paints such people as merciless and are only after for their own benefit; therefore, he’s fearful and isolates himself from others.
To further accentuate his sentiments on being a runaway slave, Douglass utilizes juxtaposition. He recounts the following: “in the midst of plenty, yet suffering the terrible gnawings of hunger,—in the midst of houses, yet having no home” (68-71). With the use of two contrasting ideas, Douglass is able to generate a bigger impact of the idea that all these things are privy to others but to him, a fugitive, it's barred. It’s as if all these things are within a glass box that he has no access to. He can only gaze upon it which makes it worse since he sees that it’s available to everyone with the exception of him; it's akin to the myth of Tantalus, a man starved and has food surrounding him. Both Douglass and Tantalus are endlessly tormented since they see that these things are within their reach but they can never seem to obtain it. Douglass is fatigued from his constant paranoia, and he has no one and nothing to turn to; he's alone and has to fend off for himself.