Frederick Douglass Nonfiction

Literary nonfiction forms make the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass a personal yet powerful reading. This reading was written by the protagonist himself, Frederick Douglass. On this reading, Douglass discusses his life as a slave, how he was able to achieve some goals and why he did them. To this day, Douglass is a significant person in history because he fought for African Americans rights and freedom. Douglass takes advantage of many literary nonfiction forms such as personal experience, slice of history and personal opinion to aid a message to the readers. When Douglass was first sent to live in Master Hugh’s family as a slave, he learned that his mistress treated him like a “human being ought to treat another” (37). The reason why Douglass learned how to read was because his mistress taught him the alphabet since she was described by Douglass as a “tender hearted woman” (37) who took cared of people that were in need since she had more than enough provisions. However, his personal opinion on his mistress changed as soon as she became crueler and violent than her husband. The irony of her change is that once she finally taught him the alphabet, “nothing more seemed to make her more angry than to

When he was sent to do errands, he took this time as an advantage for him to meet as many white little boys in the street so he can become the teacher and trick them by teaching Douglass how to read. Douglass said, “This bread I used to bestow upon the hungry little urchins, who, in return, would give me that more valuable bread of knowledge” (38) which was a metaphor to learning how to read. This personal experience example is significant because this is when Douglass finally learns how to read which was symbolized at that time period as freedom for slaves since it was forbidden for slaves to learn how to