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