Fredrick Douglass Essay -- essays research papers

After reading the Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, An American Slave, I have received a better understanding of the life of a slave. Douglass has a way of explaining the trials and tribulations of a slave, which makes the reader, look at the situations in a different perspective. Douglass narrative was acceptedly oral and he eventually sit down and wrote it as myth of events of that clock during his life. I believe he wrote it not just to tell his story but for other abolitionists of the time to actually feel what the slaves went through.Douglass begins his narrative in a very original way. He does not jump into the accounts of his life. But he begins very motionless and describes the overseers in a detailed manner. He compares one of his slave masters, Mr. Covey, to a horse breaker. A horse breaker trains horses to be obedient and this is simply what Mr. Covey does, he trains slaves in a similar way. The audience Douglass is act to appeal to are the other abolition ists who he wants to convince that these masters were malign for their treatment of other human beings. The other abolitionists consist mainly of white, materialistic individuals, usually women. They were the most literate people of the time, therefore they could read this story and understand where Douglass was coming from. He did not go into gruesome detail because the women of that time could not handle the gory descriptions of the beatin...