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“Without a struggle, there can be no progress” (Fredrick Douglass). In the book The Narrative of The Life of Fredrick Douglass by Fredrick Douglass, Douglass, who was born into slavery, had to go through many different masters and obstacles before he became a free man. Douglass succeeded at escaping and freeing himself, while other slaves did not succeed for many reasons. First of all, one of the reasons why Fredrick Douglass succeeded in escaping was because he could read. Sophia Auld was teaching Fredrick Douglass how to read until her husband, Hugh, forbade her to continue.
Douglass knew that the only way to be treated like a human being -- and eventually become on of the most successful black men of the nineteenth century -- was through learning. Learning can be tough and painful, but it is through the pain that people grow and learn to thrive. Both the man in Plato’s Republic and Frederick Douglass learned to breathe through the pain as they went about their learning experiences. Both works illustrate the idea of enlightenment through learning and how painful the brutal reality of truth is. While one is metaphor and one is autobiographical, they show that if one can learn to get passed the pain, you can free yourself and experience a world you never knew
50 years later, a man who narrowly escaped his slavery would face the same challenge of establishing his free life in New York. He had endured cruel masters during his slave life, and traveled far to begin his free life without a job nor an education, his name was Frederick Douglass. Both of these men had weathered different slave conditions, Frederick experiencing
“It is your reaction to adversity itself that determines how your life’s story will develop.” – Dieter F. Uchtdorf. Two different people, who both endured slavery were continuously being knocked down, were able to achieve greatness and respect. Sadly, both of these upstanding men bore slavery, they had extremely incompatible experiences in slavery. Booker was freed in his teenage years and did not bear heinous and sinister acts against him; on the other hand Fredrick witnessed and withstood twisted actions that no one deserves.
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave by Frederick Douglass (University of Virginia Library. Web. 15 Dec. 2015) puts readers in a position that allows them to understand the great struggles and misfortunes that came with being an American slave and how Frederick Douglass’ managed to escape from the grasp of slavery and find his own liberating freedom. A daring feat that can be defined by a series of epiphanies, a man’s great determination, and the constant regrowth of a broken man’s soul. From the excerpt, previously shown above, Douglass depicts a vivid image of just how severe the work conditions of slaves were, how difficult it was to please a slave master, and how horribly a man can be ripped of his will.
¨If there is no struggle there is no progress¨. Today´s world has greatly changed because of Frederick Douglass that he took this is how he showed progress. Douglass purpose was to abolish slavery He wanted slaves to be free and be happy and have an education. He was born into slavery. He was born in Talbot County in Maryland. He was trying to get everyone to believe that slavery was bad for both slaves and slave owners.
Whether or not a slave narrative is able to persuade its readers of the inhumanities of slavery, the complexities within slave narratives and the discussions they create should not be overlooked. There is power within the act of writing one’s personal journeys and hardships throughout life, and that power gives former enslaved people the opportunity to express their own thoughts while making changes for future generations. Solomon Northup’s 12 Years A Slave gives a heart-wrenching depiction of what slavery was like in America. If the cruel images of the realities of slavery do not affect readers emotionally, then there is at least hope that the logical arguments raised throughout the novel can persuade those who are unwilling to see slavery
When your freedom or even your own life is challenged, you will do most anything to get what you deserve. In the novel Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Douglass shares his experiences with regard to the risks he took to gain what he felt he deserved, his freedom. Douglass shares his life story by appealing to ethos, pathos, and logos to demonstrate the horror and inhumanity of slavery, which he not only wanted to escape, but fight to end. Douglass
The Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass is an inspirational story of his life as a slave. He lived through many hardships and terrible treatment from white people. He persevered through being whipped, beaten up, and working for greedy masters. Douglass was a fighter. Whether he was fighting for freedom, fighting his master, or fighting to spread the knowledge of how to read and write, he never gave up.
In the book of Frederick Douglass, “Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass” it narrates the life a young black slave to a mature man who gets his freedom. The story of Frederick Douglass is a story to admire, yet hard to understand and believe that for many decades slave like Douglass was a norm. In the early 1800’s when Douglass was born it was inevitable, if you were born a black African American boy or girl you inherited to be a slave. He was born in a slave plantation, where they work for hours of the day with little to no food to survive, minimal clothes and poor sheltering. Slaves in the 1800’s were beaten for any reason or no reason, the power the white men had was like beating an animal.
Fredrick Douglass under extra ordinary circumstances and luck managed to escape the debilitating and devastating effects of slavery. Slavery being so debilitating tested even the strong will of Fredrick Douglass. Douglass even after being educated still felt the chains of slavery. It was through such masters like Mr. Covey that moved him past his breaking point. “My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellectual languished, the disposition to read departed the cheerful spark that lingered abut by eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!”
In reading “The Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass”, we are going to take an overview of a success of a slave man. A slave who was born into slavery, a slave who struggle for liberty, a slave who suffered the whipping and insults from his masters. Douglass lived a difficult childhood. In his early years, he separated from his mom and he was not able to see her, and the man that he calls him a father was his white master. In addition, Douglass faced many challenges in his life.
All of Douglass’s life, he endured discrimination, oppression, as well as many other evil attributes intertwined within slavery. In his conquest for survival, he was shunned away and told to return to the one who caused his mass oppression, while he was seeking the slightest amount of sympathy and regard for his condition. He returned to this treacherous instance caused by slavery, where he then endured mass beatings and torture for his pursuit of basic needs for his means of self survival. This oppression he faced caused Douglass to turn a leaf mentally, to stand up and fight for his rights of
Douglass managed to overcome the maltreatment of his wretched slave owners through the eventual attainment of freedom. The injustice imposed upon the African-American slaves by their owners was the crux of Douglass’s motivation to escape this inhumane life. Adolescents in today’s society could use Frederick’s determination as an example of moving forward to better oneself or one’s situation regardless of
his plantation, the amount of violence Northup details becomes more frequent, and he describes the fear that all slaves faced at the beginning of the new work day “Then the fears and labours of another day begin; and until its close there is no such thing as rest. He fears he will be caught lagging through the day; he fears to approach the gin house with his basket-load of cotton at night; he fears, when he lies down, that he will oversleep himself in the morning. (Northup, pg.171). Solomon Northup captures the relentless emotional and physical toll that slaves faced every day at the hands of their masters and the hired help.
