The Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass - 1577 Words

Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, more commonly known as Frederick Douglass, was born around 1818 in Talbot County, Maryland (Hagler). Douglass was one of the most influential human rights leaders and one of the most renowned abolitionists. By learning to read and write around the age of 10, Douglass was able to develop a greater understanding of the world that didn’t revolve around slavery, along with the desire to become a free man and civil rights activist (Hagler). Douglass is now well known for his famous autobiography, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, in which he recalls his many experiences in slavery and the ways he dealt with the daily suffering. In his autobiographical narrative, The Narrative of the Life†¦show more content†¦Douglass is able to paint the most horrendous and vivid picture in the mind of the reader, and just imagining the things that Douglass includes in his autobiography would make anybody want to see slavery put to a n end. Another time Douglass is able to really demonstrate his abilities with harsh imagery is when he describes the slave ships. Douglass recalls the masses of dead bodies would remain shackled to the other barely living slaves on board. Douglass also writes about how the people in the harbor could smell the slave ships even before they could see them, most likely from the smell of the ships rarely emptied waste buckets. Douglass is able to paint another sad scene in the reader’s mind when describing the way slaves would choose certain death by jumping over the edge of the slave ships, just to escape the horrible treatment on the slave ships that they had to endure. Lastly, Douglass describes the food the slaves were fed on the ships, which was nothing more than rotten corn meal full of maggots and rotten scraps. Another occasion Douglass used harsh imagery was when describing the two slaves in Baltimore, which he described as emaciated and sickly. Douglass tells how the two slaves were so neglected and not taken care of that they had hair falling out of their scalps, and after reading the passage on them, the reader feels sympathetic towards them, and feels as if they know the two girls, when the reader