Frederick Douglass' Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave is a harrowing firsthand source into the American institution of slavery during the first half of the nineteenth century. The narrative serves as a persuasive document, written to pass on the experiences and to help the abolitionist's cause with the optimism that these recounts would successfully lead to "hastening the glad day of deliverance to the millions of [his] brethren in bonds " (Douglass 125). Written by himself, Frederick Douglass provides detailed description of the troubles and challenges that he faced growing up as a slave in Maryland and insight into his development from a slave to a freedman by utilizing slave narrative techniques to produce sympathy and understanding. The narrative follows several themes as readers struggle through Douglass' difficult words, from the physical, mental, sexual abuse that served as a bind of slavery to the use of ignorance slave-owners would employ against their slaves.
Abuse was not uncommon towards slaves on the nineteenth century and was used as a method of suppression. Frederick Douglass' narrative brings to light the terrible experiences that slaves were forced to endure by vividly describing just how cruel and dehumanizing slavery truly was. Douglass learned from a very early age of the brutal physical abuse that coincided with everyday plantation life through the whipping inflicted upon his Aunt Hester. "[Master] used to tie [her] up to a joist, and whip upon her naked back until she was literally covered in blood. No words, no tears, no prayers, from his gory victim, seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose. The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped longest. He would whip her to make her scream, and whip her to make her hush " (Douglass 45). This was neither a rare scenario in the South, nor was it the harshest.
