The Importance of the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (original) (raw)

“How a slave was made a man”: Frederick Douglass’ performance of identity in "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written By Himself"

Frederick Douglass (~1818-1895) was one of the most famous African American of the 19th century. He was a slave, a writer, orator, editor, activist and social reformer, and an abolitionist leader. In 1845, he published – at the Anti-Slavery Office in Boston – his well-known work, "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written By Himself". It is considered one of the most important slave narratives released before the Civil War. In general, slave narratives represent a literary corpus that was greatly popular in the 19th century America. Written in first-person narrator, slave narratives show the everlasting challenge produced by the dichotomy freedom-slavery. In addition, slave narratives – as in the case of Douglass’ Narrative – focus on the human sides of slaves, providing a way to recuperate their own identity in the daily and terrible reality of slavery. For this reason, one of the slave narratives’ ultimate purposes is to convince the reader that slavery had to be denounced and abolished at once. This paper will focus on the analysis of the "Narrative" of Frederick Douglass as both a vehicle for the search of freedom and the search of identity, providing an explanation on how Douglass is able to define his “self.”