Comparing The Known World And Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglas

The Known World, a fictional historical novel by Edward P. Jones, and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, an autobiography written by it titular Frederick Douglass, are both texts that portray life on a plantation in the 19th century, during the age of slavery in the United States. They have some similarities as a result of the setting. However, both works were created with different purposes in mind, resulting in many differences between the two.

As an autobiography, Frederick Douglass’s piece is much more personal and thus more subjective than that of Jones’s. Douglass describes many details with strong adjectives. This is most noticeable with the negative depictions of his plantation’s owners and overseers:

In his text, Jones is able to describe very specific details: “She wiped her tears and then she began to run, and in the moments it took for the sun to go behind another cloud, she had caught up with the wagon and had hold the back of it” (Jones 45). This is in contrast to Douglass’s relatively fair descriptions. This is due to the fact that The Known World is a fictional story. Jones knows all of its details because he created them. Frederick Douglass, however, cannot perfectly recall every single detail from the memories of his childhood. One reason for this is the forced ignorance slaves are brought up in by their holders. Douglass is not even aware of his exact date of birth and age - “I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it.” (Douglass 1). This allows The Known World to give a noticeably more vivid image of what happens in the story, which is perfect since the main purpose of the work is to tell a story. The vivid details of Jones’s text would not work as well in Douglass’s memoir. They would instead detract from its overall purpose as an abolitionist

The Known World’s focus on multiple characters, including the slaves of a black slaveholder and former slave give insight into how free an African-American could be after escaping the clutches of slavery and both the differences and similarities between black slave owners and white slave owners. It also tells of the moral choices made in assuring that slaves were treated well: “...Skiffington saw no way to rid themselves of the girl. Selling her would be out of the question because they could not know what would become of her” (Jones 33). Frederick Douglass’s memoir describes the process slaves go through as they are born/moved into plantations: “Frequently, before the child has reached its twelfth month, its mother is taken from it, and hired out on some farm a considerable distance off, and the child is placed under the care of an old woman, too old for field labor” (Douglass