The Personal Experience of Slaves in The Slave Narrative by Frederick Douglass and the Similarities of Ideas in Self-Reliance by Emerson

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During the mid-nineteenth century, slavery was still practiced around most of the places in America. Frederick Douglass describes slavery according to ante-bellum African American in his “The Slave Narrative”. It is focused on the slave’s personal experiences who had fled from slavery and sheltered for safety in the northern states. Douglass is successful in describing his sufferings and pain in first person narrative, when he was a slave, in a very realistic and depicting manner. Emerson however has his key work on individuality by emphasizing the significance of thinking for oneself instead of modestly accepting other people's concepts. In most of his literature, he indorses individual involvement and experience over the understanding and informations gained from other sources he has expressed the view that a person who scorns individual insight and chooses to count on others' opinions lacks the innovative power necessary for strong and bold individuality. He believed that this behavior doesn’t give birth to a new idea but, makes a person believe and follow the way somebody else has intuited. The two pieces of literature converges by concluding at a point where they both agree on the characteristic of self-reliance. The theme of self-reliance can be closely captured in the actual life of Douglass during his slavery. Although they use different supportive objects, the points made by Emerson on self-reliance can be related to the real life of Douglass during his slavery. The choices were very limited to Douglass for obtaining the required experience when he was held in captivity, which is described in Self-Reliance by Emerson.
During the captivity of Frederik Douglass he was very limited with the experiences in his life and wa...

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...t to their audience. They both had resemblance and difference in various aspects of social and individual beliefs and style relating to that time. Although both Emerson and Douglass spoke on behalf of individuality, Emerson believed in the idea of connecting with God from soul whereas Douglass stood up for the self-identity, development of personal goal and equality for the betterment of society. According to Buccola, Douglass believed that a men has to be self-reliant to have individual initiative within. “Rather than seeing self-reliance and interconnection as antagonistic, he saw them as closely related.”(Buccola, 168). Both Emerson and Douglass shared a common view on the approach to abolish slavery and it was that men should first understand themselves and they should have personal initiative for betterment of society by standing out from the bad norms within.

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