Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

We’ve learned about slavery almost every year since seventh grade, but the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” was nothing like I’ve read before. While reading this autobiographical account, I found myself having to take breaks to digest the information.

Frederick Douglass describes his life from birth, to working as a slave, to eventually freedom. He tells stories from his childhood and family, life living under his masters, his work, his education, and his journey to escape. Just within the first two pages of chapter one, I felt so much emotion when he described his mother—never being able to see her, and not even remembering her when she died. As I am writing this blog post, I cannot put into words how I felt while reading about his life and experience working as a slave: food and clothing allowance, being naked in the cold months of winter, witnessing whippings of fellow slaves, punishment, and planning to escape – these things are unimaginable to me.

Frederick Douglass was very smart. He started to learn how to read from Mrs. Auld, but was quickly shut down by Mr. Auld because “it was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read” (20). After he successfully learned how to read and write from living in Master Hugh’s family, he started to push his knowledge. He heard of the word “abolitionists” and knew that he wanted to know what that meant, because it was associated with slavery. I thought it was funny when he kind of tricked boys into teaching him new words while he was at the ship-yard (pg 26).

One thing I was confused about was the different masters (Colonel Lloyd, Mr. and Mrs. Auld, Mr. Thomas Hamilton, Master Hugh, etc.) and how Frederick Douglass moved around.

I would like to talk more about his experience as a slave and his journey to freedom in our class discussion.