Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - Essay Example

Frederick Douglass Although his exact birth is not known, Frederick Douglass believed he was born sometime in February of 1818 in Maryland. He died on February 20, 1895. At birth, he was called Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. “He spent his early years with his grandparents and with an aunt, seeing his mother only four or five times before her death when he was seven” (People and Events, 2008). In his narrative book Frederick Douglass: Life of an American Slave, the author talks about his early life and education. The way he does this illustrates how slavery dehumanizes the soul and the factors that operated to inspire him to grow out of this condition. Although most people today believe slavery in America was confined to the south, Douglass witnessed many slaves being beaten during his early childhood in Maryland. He was often required to endure cold and hunger due to neglectful conditions in his northern home. When he was eight years old, he was sent to work for a ship’s carpenter in Baltimore. While there, he learned to read and write until his mistress was informed this was against the law. His experience in the city made him aware that not everyone bought into the idea of slavery. When Douglass was 15, his owner died and he was sent back to the farms. There, he was cruelly beaten by the slave-breaker Edward Covey until the day Douglass beat up Covey and tried to escape. He was caught and returned to slavery, but sent back to Baltimore. In Baltimore, Douglass borrowed the identification papers of a free sailor friend and successfully escaped on September 3, 1838. He began writing about his experience in 1845. Douglass’s narrative reveals the degree to which black people were made into beasts. Although his mother died when he was seven, he admits the news had almost no effect on him. This was because he had been separated from her since infancy. “Never having enjoyed, to any considerable extent, her soothing presence, her tender and watchful care, I received the tidings of [my mother’s] death with much the same emotions I should have probably felt at the death of a stranger” (Ch. 1). At this point, he’d also watched his aunt brutally whipped and he was working in the fields. Early separation from family destroyed any natural human feelings of attachment and removed any possible support. Cruel treatment kept him always in fear. Neglectful living conditions made him grateful for the smallest crust of bread. His description of the life of the slave reveals the need for and active encouragement of bestial survival tactics. Experience in the field is contrasted with experience in the city that caused Douglass to realize his humanity. He describes how his mistress started teaching him to read until the master told her to stop. “Whilst I was saddened by the thought of losing the aid of my kind mistress, I was gladdened by the invaluable instruction which, by the merest accident, I had gained from my master” (Ch. 6). After returning to the farms, he finally realized the implications of his experience. The realization of how reading had opened his mind to his own humanity spurred him to continue learning and to pass this knowledge to other slaves. At the time, Douglass’s writings served as encouragement to other slaves. He reveals some of the less obvious issues that must be overcome for a slave to become a ‘free man’. In discussing these issues, Douglass sheds light on the danger of a mindset where a person’s potential, regardless of race or gender, is limited. These are timeless concepts. Even when they are only mental states, they are very real. In telling his own story, readers today understand they can overcome adversity too. Works Cited Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Yale University Press, 2001. Octavia Butler Not all books that tell the story of African American history are focused on real events. However, just because a story tells of fictional characters or make-believe possibilities doesn’t mean that it doesn’t express some reality. Sometimes, these stories focus more on the beliefs and experiences of the people involved and thus can reveal more about the inner life of the culture. This is the case with a book like Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed. In this book, the author tells the story of two characters who seem completely opposed in their approaches and in their goals who must still find a way to live in the same sphere. In creating this story, the characters also become metaphors for the values and focus of opposing ideologies – one which would exploit for personal gain and the other that simply wishes to be permitted to exist. In this book, the two main characters are immortals that must learn how to live with each other. The story is told in the form of a fable, in that the reader is always aware, at some level, that a deeper meaning is intended. The older character is Doro. He has the ability to move his spirit into the body of any other living being and make it do what he wants. Each time he shifts into a new body, the old body dies and the individual within the new body is destroyed, but Doro feels no moral constraint. His driving focus is on experimentation and personal comfort. He spends his endless existence jumping from body to body conducting breeding experiments upon the human race by exploiting those with unusual traits. He is curious to see what kind of ‘talents’ he can produce by continuing to cross-breed various types of freaks or misfits. His entire character is fed through time by the link of death and destruction. This character is contrasted against Anyanwu, another immortal that Doro meets as he travels through the world on his experimental quest. Anyanwu’s talent is to be able to change her body to any shape she wants because of her strong knowledge of biology and the way it functions. She has an innate sense of what is needed to sustain and support life. She uses this ability to create medicines and treatments for people she meets as she makes her way through the world. Because she has such strong control over her own body, she never shows any signs of aging but she must take care not to be branded a witch. It is this need to avoid detection that keeps her moving. Throughout her existence, she is linked with the forces of life and sustenance. Although both characters are immortal and diametrically opposed in their beliefs, they need each other. Doro would like to kill Anyanwu to prevent her from interfering in his experiments and could easily do so by just jumping into her body. However, he’s afraid that he will lose the only other being capable of understanding him fully and he wants to gain her knowledge to help him with his experiments. It is simply against Anyanwu’s nature to try to harm Doro, but she also desires more equal companionship. This sets up the central conflict of the story – the need for companionship exactly equal to the utter contempt. Because they are equally matched, no forward progress seems to take place from beginning to end. Read as an analogy, the book reveals one of the principle dynamics that has occurred and continues to occur throughout American, not just African, history. One group seeks dominance for purely personal reasons, seeking comfort and gain regardless of the expense to others. The other group seeks equality and harmony with nature, treating all people according to their need. While each despises the other, the truth is that neither can survive in a vacuum. Works Cited Butler, Octavia. Wild Seed. Warner Books, 2008. August Wilson Many people are unaware that racial boundaries were almost as bad in the northern cities as they were in the south leading up to and following the Civil War. Although the industrialized cities offered greater opportunity for black people, this was mostly because the growing factories needed low-wage workers. Black people in the north still had to deal with many of the internal personal issues that black people in the south were struggling with even after emancipation. These are ideas that come out in works such as August Wilson’s play Joe Turner’s Come and Gone as the characters struggle with identity, migration and racial discrimination. Each of the characters in the play demonstrates an intense struggle with the concept of identity regardless of their age. Seth and Bertha have managed to establish a nice boardinghouse and make ends meet through various capitalistic pursuits, such as Seth’s pots and pans business. In this respect, they seem to have established a strong identity as business people, but it is an identity that Seth feels he must defend constantly, finding fault with Bynum’s obscure religious practices, condemning Jeremy for allegedly being drunk one night and showing extreme judgment against Loomis from the start. Many of the characters appear in search of something which Bynum simplifies for us by calling it a song. Whether it’s Loomis and Zonia seeking the rest of their family or Jeremy seeking the courage to express himself or Mattie seeking the strength she hopes for in love, each character must find something they can believe in that is strong enough to identify their spirit. Migration is another important element of this play as many of the characters are involved in the great migration of black people from the subservient atmosphere of the south to what they hope will be a better world in the north. This idea is first introduced with the fact that the story takes place at a boardinghouse – a sort of variable-term bed and breakfast. Part of this migration is the result of black families trying to reunite with those who have sought better fortune up north, leaving their children and spouses behind as in the case of the Loomis family. Work was a strong draw for those seeking a sense of independent identity such as Martha Pentecost, but some of it is the result of available work opportunities and a spirit of adventure as with Jeremy and Molly. However, this ease of migration also made it easier for families to disintegrate again with the Loomis family providing example but also as seen in the case of Mattie who comes to the boardinghouse trying to find her old boyfriend, shifts her affections to Jeremy and is again left behind. Finally, the play deals strongly with the racial discrimination black people still had to deal with in the northern cities. Even though there are more opportunities, people such as Jeremy still found themselves being arrested on trumped up charges simply because someone didn’t like the way they looked or being required to relinquish pay for no reason. Selig actively exploits his position as a white man to try to get better prices out of Seth and to ‘help’ families find their missing members. Seth worries that Bynum’s strange practices in the backyard will make it difficult for him to retain his reputation as a respectable boardinghouse. Through August Wilson’s play, it is possible to see that the condition of the African American in American society even after emancipation was not much better than their condition under slavery. While they had better opportunity to support themselves better, there was little stability within this shifting society, respect was difficult to come by and harder to keep and adopting an identity was the central need. Works Cited Wilson, August. Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. Samuel French, 1990. Read More