Frederick Douglass Narrative Analysis

In 1845, former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass published an autobiography expressing his life growing up as property and eventually obtaining freedom. The book is a well written piece into understanding slavery in America during the eighteenth century. Beginning with him explaining his parentage and early childhood in Maryland, to meeting his wife Anna Murray and escaping to the north to become a free man. Douglass’s memoir is meant to portray the cruelty slaves received from their masters, and convince the reader that blacks are capable of academic success. His writing style can be described as blunt and objective, especially when depicting violent imagery. Significant events of the first twenty years of his life include his early child, his service to the Auld family, and a brawl with a slave breaker.
In the first chapter Douglass directly describes the place of his birth place. While he can accurately describe his home in Tuckahoe, Maryland, he was never told his date of birth. He wrote this

He has been transferred by the Aulds to live with the cruel slave breaker Edward Covey. Douglass wrote “I had been at my new home but one week, before Mr. Covey gave me a very severe whipping, cutting my back, causing blood to run,” (Douglass 1845, 55). Eventually when Covey prepares to punish Douglass a fight breaks out between the two. Covey calls upon two other slaves to help him, one is injured by Douglass kicking him and the other refuses to fight. When the fight ends Douglass proves he’s far stronger writing “for he had drawn no blood from me, but I had from him” (Douglass 1845, 67). This fight represents Douglass’s view of himself, the final decision between whether he’d see himself as subhuman or as an equal to his masters. He wanted to let the reader understand that he valued himself and nothing could’ve broken his desire to show