Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 88
 late delivery October 25, 2009
G. Velazquez (everett, wa)
i ordered the book over a month ago and i haven't got the book yet!! very frustrating
 Frederick Douglas September 21, 2009
J. Binkerd
I had to read this for a class on the Civil War, but in all honesty I would have read it eventually anyway. Especially if someone told me how good it was. Douglas generates countless passages that drip with eloquence, to the point I had trouble selecting only a few passages for my paper! Very good book, especially if you are interested in a first-hand account of slavery in the 1800s American South.
 Reporting From Hell May 13, 2009
Bill Slocum (Norwalk, CT USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
It's amazing how often, in the dark nights of man, a voice cries out and manages to be heard. This, one of the loudest such cries in the history of the United States, is the story of an escaped slave named Frederick Douglass, who bears witness to an ordeal of hunger, beatings, and random murder.
"Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass" is Douglass's own story, plainly told. While published in 1845 as an abolitionist argument against the institution of slavery, much of its enduring power comes from being a specific indictment against the whites in and around Baltimore, Maryland who figuratively and sometimes literally bat Douglass around as a kind of prop to their lower-middle-class existence.
His first overseer, a drunkard named Plummer, beats his Aunt Hester with a whip until it is covered with gouts of blood. A woman in Baltimore, Mrs. Hamilton, keeps a cowskin at her side at all times, to beat the two famished girls who wait upon her if they make any minor mistake. A Methodist preacher, Hopkins, preemptively beats his slaves as a warning to the rest to mind their ways.
Slavery, Douglass observes, has a dehumanizing effect on the master as well as the slave. "The fatal poison of irresponsible power", Douglass calls it, and documents its effect on one woman who initially befriends Douglass and teaches the young boy to read before changing her ways in the wake of her husband's scorn.
The husband had a point, Douglass reveals. That seed of education implanted in Douglass the desire to read, ultimately to be free.
"Mistress, in teaching me the alphabet, had given me the inch, and no precaution could prevent me from taking the ell," he states.
An inspiring story, the "Narrative" suffers at times from the excesses of Victorian-era literature and at others from an understandable reluctance from the author to reveal the facts of his final, successful escape. Douglass was writing for a cause, a great one, but there are times when he makes his points and times when he pounds them a bit too long.
Douglass is better when relating the day-to-day struggles of his fight for self-respect, learning surreptitiously from white boys by pretending to show off his basic writing and getting them to show him they can do better. There's also the considerable thought he brings to the table. The white preachers talk about slavery as a Biblically mandated fate for the black man, but Douglass points out many slaves owed the circumstances of their birth to the man watching over them with the whip. Douglass himself was half-white, but that didn't make him half-free.
Ultimately, Douglass says enough, and decides he not only will be free, but already is: "I now resolved that, however long I might remain a slave in form, the day had passed forever when I could be a slave in fact." It's a singularly triumphant moment in this consistently readable book.
Should be required reading for all U.S. citizens January 17, 2009
Ben Woods (Baltimore, MD, USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
They say that if you believe enough in something, and have enough persistence to see it through to the end, then regardless of the circumstances, it will be accomplished.
I have a hard time indisputably believing this. However, after reading "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave," it's tough to deny the plausibility of the above statement actually being true.
To put it bluntly, Frederick Douglass had virtually zero chance to survive. He was intended to be a slave for life. Through a series of events, however, he came to the conclusion that by receiving an education, he may have a chance, albeit slim, to lead life as a free man.
To achieve learning at all costs, Douglass made his way through various terrains, people and incidents, any of which could have ended his life, or at the very least, his crusade. Instead, he somehow managed to adapt and succeed at nearly every turn. And even when he was knocked down, he found a way to have the last laugh in the end.
I could go into specific details, but in such a brief column, it would be impossible to do them justice. There are multiple reasons I would recommend this book. First, if you've ever felt as if you could not do something, you should put yourself in Douglass' shoes for an instant. You would be hard-pressed to be in a more difficult situation than he.
Second, and most important, is the emphasis on education that Douglass cherished during his lifetime. Being able to grow through learning is such a critical item for every human being, yet many of us take it for granted, or even worse, have the notion that it really doesn't matter. It's not just about answering questions on a test or about a passing grade in school, though. What it's really about is reading or observing a person and/or a situation and understanding what is occurring.
Once you start to collect the knowledge of the world around you, there's no limit as to what you can do. Frederick Douglass was an example of this, and to take him for anything less than an example of a great human being would be a completely injustice.
A classic narrative of human brutality... December 24, 2008
ewomack (MN USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
If progress in human rights continues, and history offers no guarantees, then slavery will remain one of the USA's most nefarious legacies. Though no timeless ethical absolutes seem to exist, the statement "American slavery was wrong" feels beyond question. Unfortunately, the insatiable demand for cheap labor wreaks havoc even today. Witness "sweat shops" and the appalling treatment of some immigrant laborers. What strikes us as wrong about such exploitation is its fundamental drive to reduce human beings to mere "things." 19th century slavery followed this ideology, though on an institutionalized and far more ghastly level. In 1845, Former Maryland slave Frederick Douglass eloquently described what it was like to have his dignity ripped out from the roots. This, his first autobiography, should stand as a permanent reminder of what exploitation does to the exploited and also to the exploiters. Nobody wins. And as exploitation continues at home and abroad, we find that Frederick Douglass still has much to teach us.
This short book chronicles Douglass' murky birth (his father's identity remains a mystery) to his eventual escape to New York City. Graphic depictions of slavery fill each chapter. More than that, Douglass offers reflections on how such events shaped his self-image. These passages evoke slavery's psychological brutality. They also help the reader stand in Douglass' coarse linen shoes, which considerably adds to the work's persuasive power. One such climax arrives in Chapter X, where Douglass lashes back at the infamous "slave-breaker" Mr. Covey. "I did not hesitate to let it be known of me," Douglass writes with evident fury, "that the white man who expected to succeed in whipping, must also succeed in killing me." After one failed escape attempt, by the final chapter he finds his way to New York city. Since slavery was still very much a reality in 1845, he judiciously leaves out the details of his escape route. Then his fianceé appears as if out of nowhere, and with the help of abolitionists the newlyweds make their way to New Bedford. There he labors as a freeman until the anti-slavery movement appropriates him as one of their most eloquent spokespeople. Here he finally finds community and hope. The book's introduction outlines Douglass' life after 1845.
Some of the most intriguing passages involve Douglass' reflections on the psychology of slavery. Keeping slaves busy, illiterate, full of self-reproach, and constantly on guard against physical punishment helped keep them in thier place. Not only that, Douglass describes his slave master's holiday tradition of forced drunkenness or surfeit to the point of sickness. He suggests that this sleight-of-hand attempted to give freedom an icky aftertaste. It was a trick. Give your slaves a taste of freedom (a week off) and make it the worst experience of their lives. Douglass even claims that, following such horrors, some slaves were almost relieved when they returned to their back breaking forced labor.
Douglass ultimately escaped that hard labor, but he never forgot those he left behind. His back viciously scarred and his feet gashed from frost, he became a beacon for anti-slavery. This brief but passionately written autobiography will serve as a permanent reminder of just how horrible human beings can be to one another. Though its final chapter also relates some of humanity's good side. On both fronts, may this little book continue to inform the past as well as the future.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 88
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