Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Summary

The book follows the main character, Frederick Douglass and his unfortunate mishaps as an American slave. As we talked about in class the whole title is a problem. When he was a slave, he wasn’t considered an American so that means he wasn’t even an “American slave.” He wrote this when he was free, no longer a slave. Also, his name isn’t even Fredrick Douglas. He picked that name to pay respect to the people that helped him.

The way the books reads I believe that Douglass wrote this book to help expose evil side of slavery. This is a way of schooling the white people about the realities of what is was happening on the plantations, including more cruel and depraved behaviors. He talks about the whipping of Aunt Hester, describing her punishment for disobeying the master. This was so bad for him just to watch that he had to run in hide from the scene.

In this book Douglas talks about this Great Farm house and that when a slave was sent to the house, they would sing about it.

They would pass through these woods and sing. The song no matter the way it was sung it held power. They sound both sad and happy. Douglas says that he didn’t understand their meaning while he was a slave but after he was free, he understood that the songs were a bitter complaint about slavery.

Singing is a big deal in African American culture. Douglas stated that hearing these songs that the slave sung would teach more about the horror of slavery then volumes of philosophy books.

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I think that statement speaks volumes. To be able to hear a song sung by an enslaved and to understand better then what thousands of books could tell you is an important, powerful image. These songs spoke about the horrors, but they also had these prayers in them sent to God asking for freedom. This shows you how important that religion became to the African Americans.

In the book truth telling equals punishment, so its best to stay silent or lie. While I knew enslaved African Americans weren’t allowed to speak back to their masters or say negative things about them, I didn’t know they got into a fight over the better master. It seems kind of crazy that Slaves would argue over whose master is kinder even if the masters are not kind at all. It seems that in order to survive a slave must basically become paranoid. They need to have the mindset that they will be punished no matter what they do.

He uses this book to show what slavery does not only to the enslaved but also to the enslavers. slave owners are left without religion or reason, with hypocrisy as the basis of their existence. He shows this with the example of Sophia Auld. Said that when he went to live with the Auld’s, that Sophia was nice, almost as if she hadn’t been tainted by slavery. This goes to show that African Americans were not the only victims of slavery. It just affected everyone in a different way.

Fredrick Douglas tells the American audience of the time it was written and today a story that we are not often told. History books are told through the perspective of the winner which in most cases is the white property-owning man. They leave things out that would hurt their image. As Americans we tend to try and hide our mistakes, if you can’t see it didn’t happen mentality.