In this captivating memoir by African-American abolitionist and former escaped slave Frederick Douglass, it is clear to see why this work became one of the most influential texts in abolitionist history. With its heart-wrenching renderings of the beatings Douglass saw administered by his ruthless overseers on his friends, family, and other slaves on the various plantations he was sent to and with the detailing of the natures of his different masters, Douglass conveys how slavery is in every way morally wrong and horrendous even with “kind” masters. He makes many remarks on how slavery is not only awful for the slave but also causes the slaveholder’s character to change for the worse. For example, while writing about when he was first sent to Baltimore to live with Mrs. Sophia Auld and her husband, he nostalgically reminisces about how kind she was (she even taught him the alphabet, though it was because she did not know that it was prohibited to teach slaves to read and write). He then laments how slaveholding made her become more and more cruel and unfeeling and caused her relationship with her husband to deteriorate. Through this and other accounts of his fearful experiences, Douglass was among the first to paint an accurate picture of the horrors of slavery to the white American public and was the very first to gain such immediate success after the publication of his memoir.- Jiyu K, ninth-grade teen volunteer
Publisher's description:
The preeminent American slave narrative first published in 1845, Frederick Douglass’s Narrative powerfully details the life of the abolitionist from his birth into slavery in 1818 to his escape to the North in 1838, how he endured the daily physical and spiritual brutalities of his owners and driver, how he learned to read and write, and how he grew into a man who could only live free or die.