LITR 4232: American
Renaissance
Online Student's Assignments
Assignment 5
Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life
of an American Slave can be viewed as a study in human nature.
Douglass overcomes a life of slavery, cruelty, and hardship to become a
self-educated leader. The story
itself in no way is romantic; however, if this were the plot of a fiction novel,
it would be considered romantic. The
hero would face adversity and triumph over it.
Since it is not a fictional story, and the hardships he faced were far
worse than any fictional romantic character would, it can not really be
considered romantic. Also, if this
were a romantic fiction, his father would claim him at the end of the story and
he would inherit the entire plantation and free all the slaves on it.
Douglass’s narrative does have other aspects of Romanticism. Even though the reader is shocked and horrified over the
conditions that he had to endure, the reader knows that it will turn out okay in
the end. He teaches himself to read
because he is clever. The reader
knows that his cleverness will work in his favor in the end.
The
characters of most of his masters would be the ones that he faces up to and
wins. Many of the other characters
seem to have very gothic qualities. Mr.
Severe’s swearing is described as having the effect to, “chill the blood and
stiffen the hair of an ordinary man”. Mrs.
Auld’s “angelic” face changes to “that of a demon”.
These gothic qualities makes these characters even more frightening,
especially since these are recollections from when he was a little boy.
His experiences with Mr. Covey in the woods also have very gothic
elements. He feels safe once he
gets out of the woods, but then he has to go back into the woods and endure a
beating. There is a lot imagery of
dark woods and blood in this scene.
Douglass
is dealing with representative problems of race, class, and tradition.
The slaveholders desensitized themselves to the point that they felt
there was nothing wrong with slavery. Even
those who had not grown up with slaves became part of that tradition such as
Mrs. Auld. Douglass on the other hand broke away from the
traditions which were laid out for him as an infant slave.
He was also part of the tradition of sexual relations between slave owner
and slave. That tradition he could
not run away from, but it is not surprising that he later became an advocate for
women’s rights.