Analysis of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave - Literature review Example

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave1 Introduction The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, contains graphic portrayals of the brutal lives of slaves in nineteenth century America. These tales include brutal floggings and, even, killings of slaves. The brutality of slavery is apparent throughout Douglasss autobiography as is the strange split personalities of slave owners who can beat a slave and then treat with tenderness another slave, even to the extent of engaging in intimate sexual relations with them. It also documents Douglass growing determination to be free from these terrible conditions. The following discussion will begin by outlining the horrible conditions of slavery. This section will also consider Douglass view of slave ‘holidays’, alcohol, and Christianity. It will then focus on the turning point in Douglass life that left him determined to escape from bondage. Finally it will examine Douglass’ presentation of manhood and his identity, and contrast that with the image of slaves imposed by slave owners, male and female. Throughout issues such as paternalism, maternalism and Christianity will be examined. The final section will assess the power of Douglass’ narrative on the reading public of the 1840’s and today. Slavery Douglass was born into a slave society that separated infants from their mother, placed there mother in the field in a distant plantation and left him to be raised by an old woman too feeble for field work: “For what this separation is done, I do not know, unless it be to hinder the development of the childs affection toward its mother, and to blunt and destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child. This is the inevitable result.” Then as a toddler is forced to watch his Aunt Hester stripped to the waist and mercilessly beaten. “After rolling up his sleeves, he commenced to lay on the heavy cowskin, and soon the warm, red blood (amid heart-rending shrieks from her, and horrid oaths from him) came dripping to the floor. I was so terrified and horror-stricken at the sight, that I hid myself in a closet, and dared not venture out till long after the bloody transaction was over.” All this while Douglass is still an infant and his Narrative is only in its first chapter. From there his life as a slave is downhill. He is sent from the farm to the city of Baltimore and becomes the slave of a Mr. and Mrs. Auld. Maternalistically Mrs. Auld takes Douglass under her wing and begins to teach him to read. Her husband is furious, “"A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master--to do as he is told to do. Learning would ~spoil~ the best nigger in the world.... It would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master.” Anything that undermines a slaves usefulness or enhances his self-esteem is a threat to his value. When Captain Anthony dies Douglass learns that he and the other slaves are neither more nor less than chattel when they are valuated with, and in the same way as, the livestock. “Men and women, old and young, married and single, were ranked with horses, sheep, and swine. There were horses and men, cattle and women, pigs and children, all holding the same rank in the scale of being, and were all subjected to the same narrow examination.” It is at this period in the narrative that Douglass confesses his confusion as to the value of Christianity. “ In August, 1832, my master attended a Methodist camp-meeting held in the Bay-side, Talbot county, and there experienced religion.” Douglass doubts that this will lead Mr. Auld to emancipate all his slaves but he does hope “it would, at any rate, make him more kind and humane.” However, as Douglass laconically records, “I was disappointed in both these respects. It neither made him to be humane to his slaves, nor to emancipate them. If it had any effect on his character, it made him more cruel and hateful in all his ways.” Perversely, Mr. Auld takes to quoting the Bible, He that knoweth his masters will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes, as he whips and beats his slaves. Sold as a young man he becomes the property of a Mr. Covey. Douglass describes his time with Mr. Covey, particularly the first six months described in Chapter Ten as the time that he was forced “to drink the bitterest dregs of slavery”: It was the worst months in a brutal life of slavery. Douglass declares that “the dark night of slavery closed in upon me” during this period. Also at this time Douglass details what happened to him during the first months with Mr. Covey. He describes how he began to lose his identity and dignity and transform into a “beast-like stupor.” One can assume that these qualities that Douglass laments losing under the brutal regime of Mr. Covey are those qualities that define his personhood as he describes becoming a beast under Mr. Covey. His “elasticity” is crushed, his “intellect languished”, he stopped reading, and “the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died.” These are the qualities of humanity and personhood that Douglass saw vanishing under Mr. Covey’s hard regime. Douglass, despite being a slave, had a vision of what manhood was, what his identity was, and what human dignity required. Douglass regarded humanity and his personal identity as including elasticity—flexibility or creativity. He also saw his identity as including rational thought and decision-making, based on his intellect and his literacy. In a nutshell, freedom. Finally, he saw his manhood as including hope—‘the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye’. Turning Point Following this list of human qualities, or the lack thereof, there is a very evocative passage in which Douglass relates how watching ships setting out to sea “so delightful to the eye of freemen” only reminded him of his slavery and overwhelming hopelessness: “O God, save me! God, deliver me! Let me be free!” On the basis of this appeal one might also add that spirituality or an awareness of God was also an aspect of Douglass’s view of humanity and his identity. Essentially, Douglass defines his identity as his humanity a quality that he shares in equal measure with freemen and slave owners. In this chapter also, Douglass has an awakening. When Mr. Covey tries to whip him in the barn he fights back. He describes it as “the turning point in my career as a slave.” He subsequently declares that any man who wants to whip him will also have to “succeed in killing me.” At about this time also, Douglass left Mr. Covey and went to live and work with Mr. William Freeland (although he remained the property of Mr. Covey). While there he also began to teach other slaves, an activity that revealed to him both his delight in teaching and “in bettering the condition of my own race”, and also the burning desire of many slaves to learn to read and write. He also began to realize, as he writes, that they all had a “want of manhood, if we submitted to our enslavement without at least one noble effort to be free.” This is shocking, he is taking about revolt or flight as a source of self-esteem. Importantly, it is at this point that Douglass realizes that freedom; freedom from slavery, and the willingness to risk everything, even his very life, in an effort to achieve freedom is the essence of his manhood. This is an important development: He may not have freedom but he has his dignity, and the awareness that flight from slavery is a moral duty, Initially, Douglass regards himself as having preserved or asserted his manhood by fighting with Mr. Covey. However, later in the chapter he realizes that simply resisting (or avoiding) the worse excesses of slavery is not enough. His manhood demands freedom, not freedom from abuse and the excesses of slavery but rather, freedom from slavery itself. Slave Identities and Images This image of himself as a thinking and feeling, sentient human being contrasts with the images that slave owners such as Mr. Covey held of slaves. Arguably, Mr. Covey’s view of Douglass, and slaves in general, was that they were subhuman and incapable of rational thought, spiritual insights or feelings (both emotional and physical). Mr. Covey’s attitude is most strongly revealed in his actions. Chapter 10 opens with him brutally whipping Douglass with switches from a gum-tree. This is not remarkable in and of itself but it is revealing because the incident that inspired the whipping was not Douglass’s fault as the team that he lost control of was “unbroken”. Also, in this incident Douglass is ordered to strip to receive his punishment and when he refuses assaulted. The order that he strip, the assault and the whipping (for no fault of his own) all demonstrate Mr. Covey’s attitude far better than anything he said could. On another occasion he kicks and beats Douglass for being ill. No one would beat another human being for being sick and this reaction, again, demonstrates Mr. Covey’s image of slaves as mindless animals not deserving of respect and dignity. Mr.Coveys treatment of his slaves as livestock was most blatantly evident with is treatment of his first female slave. It also further undermined Douglasss tolerance for Christianity: I do verily believe that he sometimes deceived himself into the solemn belief, that he was a sincere worshipper of the most high God; and this, too, at a time when he may be said to have been guilty of compelling his woman slave to commit the sin of adultery. The facts in the case are these: Mr. Covey was a poor man; he was just commencing in life; he was only able to buy one slave; and, shocking as is the fact, he bought her, as he said, for A BREEDER. None of the Christian slave owners that Douglass encountered were much more than hypocrites: adulterers, abusive and violent towards their slaves even when they were the model of modesty and propriety amongst there fellow slave owners and especially on Sunday mornings. As Douglasss awareness grows he comes to see recreation, leisure, holidays and drinking as cheap baubles to keep the slaves passive: “The holidays are part and parcel of the gross fraud, wrong, and inhumanity of slavery,” he concludes. He devotes a significant passage to explaining the devious manner in which the slaves are held in thrall to holidays only to squander the liberty they offer: Their object seems to be, to disgust their slaves with freedom, by plunging them into the lowest depths of dissipation. For instance, the slaveholders not only like to see the slave drink of his own accord, but will adopt various plans to make him drunk. Thus, when the slave asks for virtuous freedom, the cunning slaveholder, knowing his ignorance, cheats him with a dose of vicious dissipation, artfully labeled with the name of liberty. By the time that Douglass is able to escape from slavery he has seen through the entire slave system and come to realize that even aspects of the slaves lives that seem to be enjoyable or beneficial are actually elements in a comprehensive plan to bleed them of their dignity, identity and industry. Impacts Douglass stark tale of the depths of depravity that slavery demands of the slaves and the slaveholders no less, shocked the public that read the book or heard him speak of his youth as a slave. William Lloyd Garrison wrote in the Preface of the electrifying impact that Douglass had on his audiences: “I shall never forget his first speech at the convention--the extraordinary emotion it excited in my own mind--the powerful impression it created upon a crowded auditory, completely taken by surprise--the applause which followed from the beginning to the end of his felicitous remarks.” Douglass narrative shocked his audiences. He appeared before them as a man; Articulate, literate, impassioned and committed. Yet, he told them stories of life as a beast, beaten, abused and whipped for incidents he was not responsible for. He told them of being judged by the same standards that livestock are judged by and being forced to live as human chattel. And he proved to his audiences that the human chattel he once was were actually, and always, persons just like themselves. References Douglass, Frederick Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave New York: Anchor Books, 1989. http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Literature/Douglass/Autobiography. McFeely, William S Frederick Douglass New York: W W Norton & Co, 1991. Read More