Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

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Summary: A Powerful Testimony of An Era We Should Never Forget!
Review: Slavery was known as a "peculiar institution". By broadcasting such labels for slavery, the southern slave owners were able to downplay the severity of the subjugation of slaves in this "peculiar institution". However, in 1845 a runaway slave by the name of Frederick Douglass was published his narrative which showed the extent of the cruelty within of the oppressive the institution of American slavery. Douglass gives a powerful portrayal of his personal struggle against the tyranny of himself and his fellow slaves. By depicting his personal story regarding the horrors of slavery, Douglass testified to the injustices of the slave institution and conveyed an urgent message of the time for prompt abolition.
Douglass leaves out no detail as he portrays the brutal means in which slaves were forced into subjugation. In order to maintain order and to achieve maximum efficiency and productivity from his slave, an owner used the fear of the ever-present whip against his slaves. Over, and over again throughout the Narrative, Douglass gives account of severe beatings, cruel tortures, and unjust murders of slaves. The message is evident. Slavery dehumanized African Americans.
From the introduction of his early experience, Douglass portrays the burdens of slavery. The reader is forced to cope with the fact that he has no tangible background. Slavery has robbed him of the precious moments of his childhood. He was raised in the same manner as one would raise an animal. In his early years he had no knowledge of time-he did not even know when he was born. He is also forced to scrounge for food in the same fashion as a pig digs for slop. The saddest insight is the alienation of Douglass from his family. He has no connection with his parents and when his mother dies he was untouched. On hearing of her death he states, "I received the tidings of her death with much the same emotions I should have probably felt at the death of a stranger" (19). The bond between mother and child is the strongest bulwark for children and to be robbed of this and to not care demonstrates just how severe slavery was to Douglass and countless others who faced the same fate. In the entire slave experience, the only escape from the repression was through sorrowful singing. As Douglass states, "every tone was a testimony against slavery..." and "slaves sing the most when they are unhappy" (29). Only through music could slaves find comfort in dealing with their anguish.
Douglass's first witness of brutality is the telling of his Aunt Hester's beating. The narration is powerfully effective through terrible detail. The cursing of the overseer, the shrieks of his aunt, and the horrible effects the whip upon her flesh is almost as agonizing the reader of the Narrative as it was to his unfortunate aunt. The fact that this terrible instance is a common occurrence makes it a heavier burden upon the reader's soul.
As if the beatings were not enough, slaves were also murdered on a whim. Douglass tells of Gore, a meticulously cold taskmaster who blew out the brains of a poor slave by the name of Demby. The chilliness of Gore's is terrible due the fact that he kills with the sympathy of a butcher.
Upon hearing about this, one would speculate that the authorities would deal with such barbaric acts justly. However, as Douglass recounts in the story Mrs. Hicks, the murderess that killed a slave girl for not moving fast enough, the law officials were hesitant to enforce the rights of the slave and would intentionally overlook such matters. This is primarily due to the fact that a slave owning society could not allow the rights of the slave to be upheld to the same level as a white man. To do such a thing would threaten the stability of their superiority. This is further illustrated in Douglass's struggle against the shipyard workers, when he fled to his master and told him of the attack his master stated that he could not hold up Douglass or even a thousand blacks testimony. The lack of protection under the law and the unwillingness of the whites to give the slaves a voice allowed the whites to completely dominate the slaves without the fear of accountability for their actions.
The worst aspect of slavery is found in the religious nature of the subjugation of slaves. The cruelty found in slavery was even more intense when placed under the pretense of the slaveholding religion of Christianity. Through Douglass's deconstruction of Christianity, he learns that the white oppressive version of Christianity is much different from his own beliefs of Christianity. The incident that shaped Douglass's understanding of the mentality of religious slaveholders was when he was placed under the authority of Mr. Freeland. In this situation, he was able to see the difference between the so-called "religious slave-holders" and "non-religious slave-holders." Douglass felt that the "non-religious slave-holders" were less brutal because they did not reprimand their slaves based on a Divine command. Instead they were more concerned about reprimanding the slaves when the slaves did wrong as opposed to whenever they felt that the Lord professed a beating.
The Narrative and Selected Writings is a powerful testimony to the struggles American slaves faced. Through the writings of men such as Frederick Douglass, abolitionists were given fuel to the bonfire of the Abolition Movement. Douglass honest testimony helped to bring out the truth about slavery. Abolitionists now had evidence to back their claim that the "peculiar institution" was in fact an institution of evil.

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Summary: LIVELY, AND SYMPATHETICALLY REFRESHING
Review: The "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave" is an old fine book. It was first published as 'My Bondage and My Freedom' in 1855. Again in 1881, it appeared as 'Life and Times of Frederick Douglass'.
Lively and sympathetically refreshing, this book gave a comprehensive narration regarding Frederick Douglass' life as a slave, and then, as a free abolitionist (and civil rights leader).
Born as Augustus Frederick Washington Bailey in Talbot county, Maryland, in 1817, young Frederick was a slave right from his mother's womb. However, a successful escape in 1838 changed his life (as well as his name). Known simply as Frederick Douglass, he migrated to New York; and finally settled at Bedford, Massachusetts: where he mastered the art of abolitionism.
The young man's writings and eloquent speeches reminded Americans of the evils of slavery. Not even resentments and pro-slavery racist attacks could deter him.
Soon after publishing his revealing autobiography in 1845, he fled to England in order to escape deportation and re-enslavement (in the South). Fortunately in 1847, some English Quakers purchased his freedom, and he returned (legally free) to the U.S.
This book gave a good account of how Mr Douglass directed "underground railroad", which took fugitive slaves to their freedom in Canada. It also narrated how he founded his abolitionist newspaper: 'The North Star'.
However in 1859, Frederick fled to England once more, having been accused of helping John Brown in the designing stage of his slave revolt plot. He did return to U.S. in 1860, and publicly supported Abraham Lincoln's presidential bid. He held respectable official posts in various capacities: among which was the United States' Minister to Haiti. He wrote several books and newspaper articles, and was finally laid to rest in 1895.
This book, ("Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass"), is a classical masterpiece. It is a historic document, which deserve your time and money. Highly recommended!

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Summary: A reminder of the fight that led to civil rights
Review: I read this book as a freshman in college and have often though about in the last 10 years. I believe it is the first written by a former slave in the U.S., and it clearly outlines the disputes surrounding the anti-slavery movement and the movement for the then status quo.

Though slavery is long gone in the U.S., it is useful to reflect on the process that lasted for many centuries before it was successful. In his case, we see how his masters, who were often considered more benign than other masters, tried to prevent Frederick from learning how to read, arguing that reading was beyond their needs.

Aside from the historical importance of this book, we also have a very interesting character in Frederick, as he is not resentful but rather fair and refined, which I believed added much to his reputation as a leader of the anti-slavery movement.

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Summary: An essential American autobiography
Review: As the title implies, this short work is the narrative of Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave. He wrote it by himself, a significant fact in that his prose is so eloquent and his pathos so powerful that it seems impossible for a former slave to have composed it. In this short autobiography, Douglass recounts his life as a slave, and details some of the horrors and atrocities perpetuated on slaves by their fiendish overseers, most of whom Douglass portrays as downright evil. More than just a narrative of his life, Douglass also gives an account of how the desire to be free grew and began to burn within his bosom, and how he grew to hate that horrible institution. Above all, this is a story of a slave learning that he is, in fact, a human being.

The significance of this book cannot be overestimated. In it, Douglass effectively dispels a number of popular myths about slaves and slaveholders, and forever changes the way the reader (especially one who lived while slavery still existed) looks at slavery. The theme of this book is very simple: slavery is wrong. It is evil, it is cruel, and, despite what many people thought at the time, the slaves know how cruel it is. Douglass cites several examples of the horrible treatment slaves received, one of them being separation of families. "It is a common custom...to part children from their mothers at a very early age" So it was with Douglass and his own mother.

Douglass writes in a very eloquent style, and this contributes to the power of this work. Many people who thought blacks were inferior in intelligence were shown to be sadly mistaken with the coming of Frederick Douglass, a man both educated and refined. It may be said that the book is not entirely fair, for it is decidedly anti-slavery, but it is undoubtedly true for most cases nonetheless. Most of the overseers in Douglass's narrative are demonic and sadistic, but when a good overseer comes along (such as Freeland), he is fair in his treatment of him.

One can imagine the fuel this book gave to the abolitionist fire, and it is not difficult to see why Douglass had such an impact on both North and South. This is, in my opinion, a definitive work, in that it shows the horrible institution of slavery in all its barbaric nature, and does it from a firsthand point of view, that of a former slave. This book was a tremendous contribution, both for the light it shed on slavery in general, and for proving that blacks were not intellectually inferior by nature, but instead were "transformed into...brute[s]" at the hands of their overseers.

This is a great book, essential for anyone wanting to study the Civil War era or wanting to gain a firmer understanding of slavery.

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Summary: An Actual Account of The Horrors of Slavery
Review: This book tells the amazing story of Frederick Douglass, an American slave. But moreover it shows the struggle blacks endured during slavery. While reading this book one understands that this is non-fiction and this really did happen. Douglass tells his experience as a slave and how he ran away from it. It is cruical that everyone reads this book so that no one forgets our past and to make sure we never repeat it. This work is classified as a slave narrative and was insturmental in bringing an end to slavery. Douglass writes so that all can understand his message and shows how he truimphed in the face of white supremacy paving the way for future leaders to strike down racism in America.

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Summary: Skip the introduction and jump into the actual story
Review: Frederick Douglass' first narrative goes beyond telling the story of his life. This autobiography gives more credit to the evils of slavery, the value of education, and the triumph of the human spirit than any history book I have ever read.

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Summary: Snooze Book for me.
Review: The book looked so boring when I opened it. The introduction is 41 pages long, and I haven't even started reading the actual story. The preface is 9 pages long. The historical annotation+index is 61 pages long. The actual story is 73 pages long, but the book itself will kind of give you an insight on a slave's life. A slave who ran away and actually became someone great and well-known. It's a story that anyone can used to pattern their life after especially when the odds seem against you.

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Summary: Still a moving testimony
Review: I often believe it is easy to criticize nineteenth century Americans for not stepping up to the plate regarding the issue of slavery and race in America. Jefferson may well have agonized over the issue he called the "death knell of the nation" and which he labeled a "neccessary evil." Certainly he benefitted by the ownership of nearly 300 slaves, but he grew up in a world in which slavery was the norm. It takes a revoutionary and remarkable man to truly stand against the only world he knows and move to create a different world, so I usually defend Jefferson and his political vision which clearly transcended that world.

Reading Frederick Douglass, however, makes me wonder how anyone with firsthand knowledge of the institution could not see the obvious pain and cruelty which existed right in front of his or her eyes. Douglass's narrative, and particularly his descriptions of the slave trade in Baltimore and the obvious place of the whip (whether used or not) as the principal vehicle of social control argues most eloquently that though the slave system may have been a social norm, the blinders had to be unbelievably thick not to see the horrors that the institution wrought. The relationship of slave and master perpetuated a most un-American (at least in terms of our professed values--cf. Douglass's later antislavery orations) tyranny and oppression. Douglass's narrative testifies that our ancestors could have seen much more and done much more and that 600,000 lives and a subsequent 120 years of racial schism and pain was too much a price to bear for the peculiar institution.

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Summary: Applicable even today
Review: In his work Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Frederick Douglass outlines his purpose in writing the piece:

"Sincerely and earnestly hoping that this little book may do something toward throwing light on the American slave system, and hastening the glad day of deliverance to the millions of my brethren in bonds - faithfully relying upon the power of truth, love, and justice, for success in my humble efforts - and solemnly pledging my self anew to the sacred cause."

Certainly Douglass' "little" book shed tremendous light on the slave system that existed in early American history and he successfully accomplished his purpose. The description of how slaves were treated was interesting and enlightening, and provokes compassion in the reader. Additionally, Douglass wonderfully explores the issue of knowledge and power, as he describes the many occasions in which slaveholders tried to keep slaves from learning to read. Finally, Douglass raises a concern about the hypocrisy among southern Christians based on the way that they treat slaves. True Christians treat all humans with love, respect, compassion, and indiscriminately. This final point raises a relevant issue in today's society - does this hypocrisy still exist?

Several statistics indicate that although the problem that Douglass addresses is not as drastic, it still remains a serious challenge that the United States must wrestle: 16.2 percent of American children are living in poverty (United States Census); 54 percent of African American families say underachievement among black students represents a "crisis," 33 percent of white parents agree (Public Agenda); 10.8 million children in the United States have no health insurance; 1 in 4 Hispanic children are uninsured; 1 in 11 Caucasian children are uninsured (Children's Defense Fund); 3/4 of teachers in public schools do not believe that schools should expect the same from students in low-income areas as students in high-income areas (Education Watch); in recent years income has decreased in the bottom, second, and middle 20% sectors, while increasing slightly in the fourth sector and substantially in the top sector (United States Census). . If American Christians were truly loving and sharing like Jesus teaches, the social stratification that is prevalent in the United States would not be nearly as extreme. The Christian Church should not allow such tremendous economic and educational differences. Although this is not nearly as glaring a problem as slavery, Douglass' narrative is applicable even to today's social problems and is well worth the read for that and many other reasons.

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Summary: one truth
Review: This was a very easy book to read. Fredrick Douglass made the language very easy to follow and understand what he wanted the reader to understand about slavery. He will captivate you so that you will be cheering for him by the end of the book. It shows how aweful the slave owners were to the slaves and how much education plays in the freedom of the slaves. It is a great book to learn about America's dark history. I am looking forward in reading the rest of his narratives to see everything that this one man acompished.