“Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Written by Himself”, dated 1845 was created by already formed by the forties of the XIX century laws of the genre, and at the same time it was deeply innovative, created new traditions, and serves as the best example of the slave narratives as artistic and journalistic genre; it therefore ensured the readers’ attention to other slave narratives. Based on this prominent work, this paper will investigate what the slavery is and what it is like to be a slave.
According to the book of Douglass, we can draw a conclusion that the life of a slave overall is very brutal. Slaves overwork and are exhausted, they get almost no food and very few clothes and have no beds to sleep on. Any violation or attempt of violation of the rules results in whipping and beating. Sometimes slaves are even shot by the overseers. Douglass himself was in a better position, as he was presented to an owner living in a city, where the life of a slave was easier. The slaves interact with all the family members; some of them are kinder, while others are harsh. A lot depends in the family, location and other aspects.
When talking about slavery in general, it is necessary to consider its essence right from the time when it was formed as a reality – from the ancient time. Slavery brought with it a strict need to distinguish between mental and physical labor. Some began to work, but not to engage in intellectual creativity, while others became mentally active, but did not engage in physical labor, such as split and immediately caused a need to distinguish between mental soulless thing and control of this thing by a person. Slave in antiquity was interpreted not only as a person but also as a thing, not acting on his/her own, but by the will of a stranger, that is, it is not the whole person, not a personality, but only its material aspect. In this case, it is wrong to think that the owners have a full human being. Nothing like that. Slave owner also is not a whole person, and only one of its part, which makes it possible for him to be a mahout of slaves that it is expedient, directed the activities of the slave. This means that the slave owner, if taken as a slave worker of formation, is not a full person, but only the human intellect, and quite abstract. However, the slave owner and slave cannot exist without one another.
From the ancient times to the time of writing by Frederick Douglass, not much has changed in the essence of slavery. The main principle of slavery has a life synthesis of slave as a thing that can make the suitable job, but without personal intentions and initiatives, and the slaveholder as forming an abstract idea in the initiative, that is, without bodily participation in the implementation of this initiative.
Based on the principle of the slave grows and its logic. A slave is not a person, but the thing capable of producing the suitable job. Moreover, as slave labor is here of the life process, in the field of logic we meet primarily with the matter, which lacks its own initiative, and is therefore only expedient potency of formed life.
A slave owner also is also not a personality, but out-of-personal formative idea. Hence all ancient logic also comes from this understanding of ideas, in which he, too, is not a person, but only non-personal formative principles. However, slave and slaveholder do not exist without one another, but make something whole, namely the slave policy, or the state. For logic it means that there is also an integral unity of ideas and matter; and as a slave and slaveholder are opposites, they are an integral unity that can only be dialectical and, of course, too impersonal. Since logic analyzes its category to the end and to their limit, and there is a limit state specified unity. Since the limit combines all their possible approach is for them and their general explains the principles in antiquity necessarily arises an idea of the sensory-material space, which is not only a whole-dialectical union of all things and all ideas, but also their ideal principle. Of course, impersonal. Antique space is also a space-time, that is quite observable thing, only very big, very big thing; and at the same time, it is a limit established in the form of the eternal, but it is foreseeable purposeful movements of the heavenly bodies.
Frederick Bailey, who fled north, proposed to abolitionists, to assist him to choose for him (including for security reasons) the new “name” of a free man, certainly saving his first name “Frederick”, given to him by his mother at birth (“to preserve my identity”). Mr. Johnson, at this time enthusiastically reading a poem by Sir Walter Scott, “Lady of the Lake”, suggested the surname Douglas that F. Douglas, once free, wore until his death and passed to his descendants – free people. Frederick Douglass, who was born in captivity, who lost his mother early, never knowing his father, who worked in the house of the owner, on the plantations, in the shipyards, lived for twenty years in slavery, escaped from Maryland to the north and became a free and highly educated man, who spent the entire his life in work for the Eradication of Slavery, another experience than Equiano’s, which could not miss his book.
Saving role of providence F. Douglas connected with the main purpose of his life – gaining freedom for himself and his people. In the name of this main goal throughout his life, he made a choice. The problem of choice lies in the center of his narrative.
The first choice has become the one of literacy, learning to understand the written word and to write. This choice was made in childhood, when he heard his boss Hugh Auld strictly forbidding his wife to teach the boy to read, because literate slave do not want to be slaves. Narrator evaluates words of Auld as a sacred fact, another intervention of Providence (“revelation” that showed “the way from slavery to freedom”), and as “invaluable instructions” received from the host. Beliefs and emotional speech of Auld prompted to reflect that F. Douglas plays a folk musical tone: “While I was deeply saddened by the loss of means of my mistress, I was deeply pleased with valuable instruction, which by chance got from my host. What he feared most, I most wanted. What he most admired, I hated most. The fact that it seemed to him the greatest evil, which should be carefully watched out for me was the greatest good, which should diligently pursue. And evidence of harm me learning to read and write, which he ardently led only breathed in me the desire and determination to learn” (Douglass 78-79). Further his life in Baltimore made sense. Henceforth, the daily bread for him was the “bread of knowledge”.
Storyteller remembered for a lifetime two books – speller and the first book bought himself – a textbook on public speaking “Columbia speaker”, composed in 1797 as a teacher and writer from Massachusetts Caleb Bingham. “Columbia speaker” includes theory and best examples of oratory, from antiquity down to XVIII century, including speech against slavery in the defense of freedom and democracy. The next great orator and preacher of freedom could not find a more useful and informative book. The tutorial autobiographical hero studied not only the art of eloquence, but also the spirit of the Enlightenment and the American freedom. Many times, he read the dialogue between slaveholder and slave, who had three escapes, and mentally involved in the debate on the side of a slave. For the first time he realized muteness, inability to verbalize his thoughts. Reading “Columbia speaker” has caused a desire to express his thoughts and refute the evidence in defense of slavery. Probably then there was born one of the best speakers and writers of his time, which better than others managed to express the thoughts and feelings of its people. Reading led to the realization of his position of a servant, was the impetus for the painful reflections, which brought profound suffering awakened in the soul of the hero. The teenager went through a painful crisis updates (so afflicted that he wanted to die and would have died if it were not there hope for freedom). It is significant that the author used the word “existence”, which contained thoughts of death and hope.
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of an American Slave. Transaction Publishers, 2009.
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