Literary Arts Magazine Spring 2010 | Page 54

The Amazing Life of Frederick Douglass By Charif Ayfarah The book by Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Lfe of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, talks about the life of the author. It also describes slaves‟ living conditions in Talbot County, Maryland, in the 1830s. From a little boy to an adult, Douglass suffered personally and physically as a slave. Beaten, whipped, and starved, he looked for any means to learn reading and writing. The more he learned to read, the more he understood his rights as a human. It was more and more difficult for him to stay a slave for life. He attempted two times to run away from slavery toward a Northern State where he wished to live as a free man. I will try to summarize his book by telling you the life of Frederick Douglass as slave and by recounting how he succeeded in learning to read and write. Aaron Anthony was his master. Separated from his mother by this master when he was an infant, he was confided to an old slave woman who was too old to work in the field. His mother died when he was a child. He didn‟t have a chance to know her. The slaveholder did that, “To hinder the development of the child‟s affection toward its mother,” said the author in this book. In any case, it was brutal to dehumanize a child from childhood. Without a mother and a father, Frederick Douglass grew up alone. In every season, he was naked and without shoes. Like all slave children, he wasn‟t able to work. The masters didn‟t buy them anything. For him, the hot season was bearable but the coldest nights were the most terrible. He stole a bag used for carrying corn to the mi