A Mercurial Author

Chapters nine and ten of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave finally deliver to the reader the climax that the book was missing.  Throughout the first eight chapters, the book was repetitive in its recompilation of similar stories of suffering and dismay.  In chapter ten, Douglass finally touches upon the parts of his life that set him apart from any other slave narrative: his direct motivation to escape and his troubles with abolition.

The climax of the narrative comes when Douglass decides to rebel against Covey.  Furthermore, the essence of the message he is trying to dispel is summarized in this scene.  Douglass says to the reader, “You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.” (34) This is defiant. This is very literate. He is able to recount his feelings from this occasion and encompass the reader in several subgenres.  There is the underdog story, which Douglass has alluded to throughout the novel but has finally adopted fully, the narrative story, which he continues, and the epiphany-triggered realization of escape, which he has hinted at but never fully expressed before.  Through what seems “like a dream rather than a stern reality,” (71) he catapults the reader into ambition.  As he pursues payment, then higher wages, and finally a path towards Massachusetts, the reader is captivated by less pathos and more admirable ethos.

What better way to finish the book, rather ironically, than to break every paradigm that has been set up throughout? Douglass no longer hides behind the piety or the cruelty that were overemployed in the now distant first part of the narrative.  Moreover, he celebrates.  He takes a “joyful heart” (112) and imposes its content on the inevitably damp reader.  Perfection.