Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
- Feb 29, 2020
- 2 min read
★★★★☆
What adjectives can yet be left to extoll upon Frederick Douglass’s 1845 Narrative? Eloquent, penetrating, harrowing, profound, inspirational … It is all these and infinitely more. What makes his story so powerful, however, is the clarity, the starkness, the frank, candid nature of his prose. Dramatic though the events of his life were, this is not a tale dramatically told. But neither is it cold and unemotional. Rather, Douglass speaks plainly—and movingly—of the events of his life, the horrors of slavery to which he was both witness and victim, the effects of the institution on slave and slaveholder alike, and the hypocrisy of a Christian religion that abides it.
I have but two small gripes. First, considering its publication just seven years after escaping bondage, Douglass’s status as a fugitive slave, and his desire to protect himself and those who might otherwise be adversely affected by the disclosure of certain details, there is an unwanted amount of self-redaction throughout. Douglass makes clear the reasons for this, all wholly warranted and understandable, but that doesn’t keep them, including the story of his escape and journey from Maryland to New York, from being missed. Second, I’m no melodramatist, but there was a part of me that longed for Douglass to abandon his measured tone and raise his voice, to scream out, lash out, wail and rage against his oppressors, against the system, against those who would rather turn a blind eye.
Of course, that would have been a colossal blunder, and both Douglass and his publishers no doubt understood this. As it happened, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave became one of the most influential pieces of literature to fuel the abolitionist movement. It remains to this day an essential read, not just for a historical understanding of the atrocities of slavery, but for the stirring account of one man’s capacity to overcome.
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