Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass Response Paper

In the book, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, we learn what it was like to be a slave in his time. We learn of the brutality and the horrible life imposed on the slaves by the slaveowners. Altogether, the book is very good at teaching us about the brutality, but who did he write this for, and why did he write it? Also, what did Douglass want the reader to take away after reading the book, and in what specific way did he recreate his time as a slave to convey his message? Overall, Douglass’s book has deeper meaning that what it was like to be a slave, and his choice of words, sentence structure, and imagery is very specific is a key example of this. Firstly, who was Douglass’s intended audience? Was it the common slave, or the white folk? Maybe it was the future generations, as a lesson to show them how bad slavery was. I believe Douglass’s intended audience were future generations. I believe he wanted people to see how terrible slavery was, and he wanted people to not report past mistakes. Altogether, I think he wanted people to see slavery for more than just its horrible conditions, but how it affected multiple generations and the dynamics

As I’ve stated previously, I think he wanted to display the physical, mental, and emotional effects slavery had on both slave and slaveowner. Throughout the book we get to see events unfold from the mind of a slave. Frederick has a unique point of view, being part of an extremely small group of slaves that could read and write, which makes his point of view extremely rare. I also feel like Douglass wanted to defy social expectation of an escaped slave by proving that black weren’t just mindless apes. He proved slaves could write and read. Overall Douglass was trying to teach future generations, while also making a statement to the masters that slaves were more than just brainless workers, but could be just as smart or smarter than