Douglass Frederick Douglass\'s Narrative of the Life

Douglass

Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass offers one of the most thorough and detailed autobiographies of a slave. What makes Douglass's narrative unique is that he witnessed a wide variety of slave conditions, given the brief time he spent in the city of Baltimore when he was young and also having the luck to have mistresses who helped him to read. Without Douglass's stint in Baltimore, he may never have tasted freedom or longed for liberation enough to inspire his eventual escape, the writing of his narrative and his eventual work as a public speaker. However, Douglass also experienced the deepest despair of slave life with Covey. The autobiography incorporates some core themes related to the life of slaves. Three of the themes most notable in Douglass's narrative include the motif of home, the symbolism of manhood, and the different types of power.

Home provides an ironic motif in the narrative of a slave, because a slave technically has no home. Douglass remains keenly aware of this fact, for even after he escapes, he becomes aware of his "homeless, houseless, and helpless condition" that remains, in spite of it all, preferable to bondage (98). For slaves, home is a symbolic state of mind. One's actual home is always changing, and it always belongs to someone else. Home connotes comfort and security, but for a slave, comfort and security are fleeting and can be taken away at any moment. For Douglass, the true meaning of home becomes freedom. He refers to the "enjoyment of freedom and the happiness of home," which enabled him to write his Narrative (33). Prior to his self-liberation, Douglass had been stolen from one home and dealt to another, never knowing the pleasure of stability or self-determination. Homes were often places of abject horror and pain, such as through his dealings with Mr. Covey. In the Covey household, Douglass was "whipped to death," and yet paradoxically, through the depths of despair in the Covey household, Douglass became more determined than ever to forge his own pathway to freedom (65). Freedom would not have been bestowed upon him willingly, and thus he needed to take it. Douglass found himself "in the midst of houses, yet having no home, among fellow -men, yet feeling as if in the midst of wild beasts," (97). By escaping, Douglass risked having no actual bed to sleep on but secured the truest home he could have: the home of a free spirit.

Douglass's escape to freedom represented his willingness to empower himself against the odds. Power is a major theme in the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, because power is a central component of the relationship between the slave and the rest of society. Whites wield what Douglass calls an "irresponsible power," (38). The power held by whites is unjustified, and thus it is false. Douglass repeatedly mentions the "power to deceive," which he witnessed in several of his slave masters (58). The power to deceive in part refers to the fact that many whites would invoke the Bible, and yet the Christian Bible teaches love and liberation, not slavery. Douglass therefore distinguishes between empowerment and power. Power is easily abused, as it is often derived from illegitimate sources. Empowerment derives from personal and spiritual power. The power that slave owners "exercise" is qualitatively different from the power that Douglass uses in teaching himself to read and ultimately, teaching himself and his fellow slaves how to escape. Education is the highest form of power and self-empowerment. Douglass's learning to read is one of the most important elements of the narrative, because many slaves like him never had that opportunity and therefore never were able to tell their story or help others. Douglass used his literacy to empower others, not to have power over others. Douglass understood his responsibility to his fellow slaves. Slaves were disempowered by being prevented to read and write. Douglass notes, "power was what they were prevented in having, eg. power to speak, have opinions, become armed with knowledge…A mere look, word, or motion, a mistake, accident, or want of power, are all matters for which a slave may be whipped at any time," (72).