Questions Galore

It is hard to expect anything other than what we already know about slavery from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas, an American Slave— and unfortunately, it didn’t break the mold.  It is necessary to remember that Frederick Douglas isn’t attempting to sell groundbreaking literature in the 21^st century.  When the book was published it was surely a revolutionary recollection of life as a slave, but today, we can get similar historical information from an overview of Django Unchained.  Because of this, the relevant question to ask oneself as a reader is not whether the book will be an entertaining and entirely educational read, but whether the book accomplished what Frederick Douglass wanted it to.  Furthermore, the immediate question, by default, is: what did Frederick Douglass want when he wrote this book?

The factual nature of the first chapter leaves the insensible reader (me) wanting more emotion, drama, and more of an all-around Hollywood setting.  Yes, I know that they whipped slaves and that attempts to escape were frowned upon, to say the least.  I also know that it was popular for slaves to be separated from their mother at an extremely young age.  So, what is the book really teaching me in terms of facts? Very little, up to this point.  Having said this, it would be unwise for me to simply continue a bashing of this memoir based solely on an equivocation of the truth.  While it may seem as though the truth, if you will, lies in the facts that Douglass reveals, this isn’t the case.  What the reader must seek to understand is the pathos that the author employs.  How is there a direct tie between my emotions (audience) and the emotions of the author?  There is an intricate relationship between Douglass and a reader that already knows the basics about slavery; the reader will be able to find more emotional reasoning through the sentiment behind writing, than in the writing in itself.  Given that it is too early to draw a wholesome conclusion to all these seemingly irrelevant questions— irrelevant for someone that only looks at the factual side of the memoir— I will prorogue any finish to this discussion until further reading.

I lied.  There is one more question, albeit it isn’t as broad as the ones previously asked.  If it is true that “…the songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the same emotion,” (Douglass, 28) are the writings of the one prompted by the same emotion than those of the other?