A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave is an 1845 memoir and treatise on abolition written by famous orator and former slave Frederick Douglass during his time in Lynn, Massachusetts. It is generally held to be the most famous of a number of narratives written by former slaves during the same period. In factual detail the text describes the events of his life and is considered to be one of the most influential pieces of literature to fuel the abolitionist movement of the early 19th Century in the United States.

    Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass encompasses eleven chapters recounting Douglass' life as a slave and his ambition to become a free man. It contains two introductions by well-known white abolitionists: a preface by William Lloyd Garrison and a letter by Wendell Phillips, both arguing for the veracity of the account and the literacy of its author.

As young school boy, I really did read anything and everything I was told to read by my teachers, as well as a mountain of other reading material personally chosen, but I will admit, I've never cared much for non-fiction. As an adult I force myself to read a non-fiction work every now and then so that I may remain grounded; however, I have many qualms with non-fiction works which I will not venture to explain here (maybe in another blog post one day) but I will say this: most non-fiction work is still fiction because either the events are exaggerated or slightly altered to increase suspense or boring, but rather important, details are omitted. Also, a lot of people who claim to have written an autobiography usually employ a ghost writer; as for biographies, since they are written by other people, as a reader you view the details through the writer's filter so events and details may be skewed to certain perspectives.

Honestly, I don't remember if I enjoyed reading Fredrick Douglass' autobiography or not, but I do remember a very important, maybe even the most important idea for the success and maintenance of a free society, the idea of how literacy plays a major role in the difference between oppression and freedom. If you want to control people, do not let them read or write, and eventually they will only have the thoughts they are instructed to have. This idea is why the major dictators and oppressors throughout history, whether on a larger scale such as ruling a country or on a small scale such as running a household, have kept books away from the people they wanted to oppress and control, even to the point of staging large book burning events. This idea is a central theme to Douglass' autobiography and for this point, it needs to remain on school-aged reading lists forever.