The feeling of isolation is one that can break one’s spirit and put on in a state of depression. Instead, one longs and yearns for the feeling of community. Within this feeling of community, one feels safe, loved and appreciated. In Frederick Douglass’ narrative, Douglass, Douglass speaks of both his sense of community as well as isolation throughout his life. These feelings of both isolation and community are ones that affect Douglass and his entire life. Because of certain events, people and his own thoughts and ideas, Douglass begins his life as an isolated boy, but through the work of events, people and his own thoughts, Douglass transforms into a confident man.
Though most of Douglass’ feelings of isolation come from his times of being
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Plummer, Douglass states reminisces, “I was so terrified and horror-stricken at the sight, that I hid myself in a closet, and dared not venture out till long after the bloody transaction was over” (Douglass 6). The things that Douglass saw literally forced him into isolation and confiding in himself. Douglass goes on to say that this event left him very weary of the future because he was afraid that he would be the next slave to be whipped. Along with events, Douglass encounters many people that contributed to his feeling of loneliness. Later in his life, Douglass is transferred to a plantation owned by Mr. Convey, a new slave owner who did not know what he was doing, in turn, he was very brutal in both words and actions. Douglass examines Convey’s character and comes to the conclusion that, “Mr. Convey’s forte consisted in his power to deceive...He seemed to think himself equal to deceiving the Almighty...to show himself independent of me, he would start and stagger through with his hymn in the most discordant manner” (62). Convey is an example of a power-hungry man who believes that he is superior to others, especially slaves. Convey did not dare do anything that would make him potentially lose his authority over his …show more content…
The first attempt of Douglass’ escape is a symbolic and turning point in his life. Douglass has yearned for freedom his whole life and when the time comes when he decides to escape, he enlists some of his other slave friends to come along with him. Douglass says, “My fellow-slaves were dear to me..and to imbue their minds with thoughts of freedom” (Douglass 81). Douglass’ worry and thoughts of his fellow-slaves show the true man inside of him. He is determined to not only help himself, but also help others. Douglass wants him friends to feel how incredible it is to be free. When Douglass finally makes his escape, he feels isolated and back in the same state of depression he had when he was a slave. However, Douglass speaks of a miracle that came and rescued him. Douglass expresses, “Thank heaven...I was relieved from it by the humane hand of Mr. David Ruggles, whose vigilance, kindness, and perseverance, I shall never forget” (104). Ruggles made Douglass feel for the first time that he is equal and deservent of his freedom. This kind man’s help showed Douglass that there is hope and love in a world full of prejudice. Even when Douglass was a slave, he knew there was a world that was good and optimistic. Because of this, Douglass made sure that his friends looked towards the future with the same optimism that
Frederick Douglass, an African American social reformer who escaped from slavery, in his autobiography “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself,” denotes the perilous life of a slave in the South. Through syntax, Douglass is able to persuade his readers to support the abolitionist movement as his writing transitions from shifting sentence lengths to parallel structure and finally to varying uses of punctuation. Douglass begins his memoir with a combination of long and short sentences that serve to effectively depict life his life as a slave. This depiction is significant because it illustrates the treatment of slaves in the south allows his audience to despise the horrors of slavery. In addition, this
Different types of literature have been part of America since the 1630’s and the varieties of literature still exist to this day. Frederick Douglass’s work and speeches during his lifetime caught the attention of many people in the United States, including slave owners themselves. Douglass has not only changed American literature, he has also inspired many other writers and speakers to seek freedom of expression for themselves. Even though he had a rough childhood because he was a slave, Douglass found ways to make the most of it. Fortunately it was because he had a nice and caring owner who taught him to read and write. Furthermore, because he had a warmhearted owner, he was able to express himself through his work to many different people of his time. Douglass’s works and speeches remain of great impact, and continue to influence and inspire many people in literature to this day. He influenced many people during his travels to Northern free states and overseas to England and Ireland where he explained and changed their mindset of the cruelty of slavery, which ultimately lead to the adjustment by the people to understand the reality of slavery.
From before the country’s conception to the war that divided it and the fallout that abolished it, slavery has been heavily engrained in the American society. From poor white yeoman farmers, to Northern abolitionist, to Southern gentry, and apathetic northerners slavery transformed the way people viewed both their life and liberty. To truly understand the impact that slavery has had on American society one has to look no further than those who have experienced them firsthand. Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave and advocate for the abolitionist, is on such person. Douglass was a living contradiction to American society during his time. He was an African-American man, self-taught, knowledgeable, well-spoken, and a robust writer. Douglass displayed a level of skill that few of his people at the time could acquire. With his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave Written by Himself, Douglass captivated the people of his time with his firsthand accounts into the horror and brutality that is the institution of slavery.
...y afraid at first but finds out that there are many ex-slaves willing to take a stand and risk their lives to help their own. Douglass realizes that with the help from the ex-slaves he could also help his fellow slaves.
a skill that would provide him with his passport to freedom. The narrative itself acts as a form of protest literature against slavery and also persuades the reader that Douglass has been transformed and is no longer a slave, but a free man.
Douglass’s life in the city was very different from his life in the country, and living in the city changed his life. In the city, he worked as a ship caulker which he excelled at, compared to a a field hand in the country which he was not skilled at. In the city he was treated better and always fed, but in the country he was experienced lack of food most of the time. The city opened his mind to escaping, and with the help of abolitionists he was able to successfully escape. In the country he did not knowledgable people to help him and was turned in by an ignorant, loyal slave. The city’s better opportunities and atmosphere led Frederick Douglass to escape freedom and dedicate the rest of his life fighting to end slavery
Frederick Douglass emphasizes the dehumanization aspect of slavery throughout his narrative. As is the general custom in slavery, Douglass is separated from his mother early in infancy and put under the care of his grandmother. He recalls having met his mother several times, but only during the night. She would make the trip from her farm twelve miles away just to spend a little time with her child. She dies when Douglass is about seven years old. He is withheld from seeing her in her illness, death, and burial. Having limited contact with her, the news of her death, at the time, is like a death of a stranger. Douglass also never really knew the identity of his father and conveys a feeling of emptiness and disgust when he writes, "the whisper that my master was my father, may or may not be true; and, true or false, it is of but little consequence to my purpose" (Douglass, 40). Douglass points out that many slave children have their masters as their father. In these times, frequently the master would take advantage of female slaves and the children born to the slave w...
Douglass appeals to pathos in his narrative through many quotes and traumatic events that he experienced. He states, “I was afraid to speak to anyone for fear of speaking to the wrong one, and thereby falling into the hands of money-loving kidnappers, whose business it was to lie in wait for their prey” (Douglass 113). By creating such an analogy, Douglass provokes guilty and sympathetic emotion from his readers. He’s saying that he doesn’t even know who he can and cannot trust, because slavery changes everyone’s personas and
...e proper descriptions of Douglass’s experiences. These words also justify that he is brilliant and not no fool. His influential words in the narrative support the message of him being smarter than what some people may believe.
The vivid feeling of relief and elation as a result of escaping the clutches of slavery is evident from the analogies and figurative language Douglass uses in the beginning of the passage. Douglass states he struggled to express exactly what significance freedom in the North had on his immediate mental state. However, he manages to use words such as “highest excitement” to present the level of relief he acquired from escaping, giving a connotation of obvious unlimited happiness. He further described such a dynamic feeling to his audience by comparing it to the feeling an “. . . unarmed mariner [receives] when is rescued by a friendly man-of-war from the pursuit of a pirate.”
Though this poem is only a small snapshot of what I personally thought Douglass was going through, I could never adequately understand the frustration he must have had. My hope in writing this poem was not to provide a psychoanalysis or theoretical idea structure to any audience, but rather to show that even today, a modern audience member like me, can appreciate the struggle of a fellow human and speak against injustices, specifically in Douglass’s time.
When first introduced to Douglass and his story, we find him to be a young slave boy filled with information about those around him. Not only does he speak from the view point of an observer, but he speaks of many typical stereotypes in the slave life. At this point in his life, Frederick is inexperienced and knows nothing of the pleasures of things such as reading, writing, or even the rights everyone should be entitled to. Douglass knowing hardly anything of his family, their whereabouts, or his background, seems to be equivalent to the many other slaves at the time. As a child Frederick Douglass sees the injustices around him and observes them, yet as the story continues we begin to see a change.
Douglass's narrative is, on one surface, intended to show the barbarity and injustice of slavery. However, the underlying argument is that freedom is not simply attained through a physical escape from forced labor, but through a mental liberation from the attitude created by Southern slavery. The slaves of the South were psychologically oppressed by the slaveholders' disrespect for a slave’s family and for their education, as well as by the slaves' acceptance of their own subordination. Additionally, the slaveholders were trapped by a mentality that allowed them to justify behavior towards human beings that would normally not be acceptable. In this manner, both slaveholder and slave are corrupted by slavery.
...details the transformation of a slave to a man. The institution of slavery defined a slave as less than human, and in order to perpetuate that impression, slaveholders forbade slaves the luxury of self definition. Therefore, when Douglass finally rejects the notions about his identity forced on him by slavery, and embraces an identity of his own creation, he has completed his journey from slave to man. He no longer defines himself in terms of the institution of slavery, but by his own thoughts regarding what his identity is. Through the metamorphosis of his identity as “an animal” to an author who fights for the abolitionist movement, Douglass presents his narrative not simply as a search for freedom, but also a search for himself.
In addition, every single night when he would be in bed he would always sleep terrified due to the horrifying things he would witness. Most of his days as being a slave he would suffer of hunger or thirst. Or most of the nights he would sleep cold shivering floor with no food in his body system. Douglass was bailed at the plantation without even knowing. So now he had no one in his family near him. Frederick never recovered from betrayal, slavery, and racism. Also every ...