In review of the book "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave," I found myself riveted by the stories of an intellectual "man" trapped inside the body and experiences of an American slave. The story is littered with idiosyncrasies about the American South at the time of Douglass' entrapment. From the perspective of Douglass, the reader sees a South in an ironic manner. Douglass views Christianity in many different realms;Christianity is a strength and a source of confusion for him, and as an indicator of evil and savagery in his owners. Douglass outlines the nature of fear for the slave and the owners. Douglass through the eyes of a slave gives the reader a chilling glance into the nature of slavery. Douglass portrays much of his life as a captured soul urging for freedom. His brilliant observations in human nature and his intellect allow the contemporary audience to evaluate what slavery was like, the consequences of slavery for both slave and owner, the vision behind Douglass' narrative, and its historical significance.

Douglass gives a very complex view of slavery of what slavery was like from both an observers standpoint and of that of a slave himself. Within his chronicles one can see the struggles of a slave trying to grasp the concepts of slavery, as he himself comes to understand them. The more Douglass comes to understand about his situation, the more confused he becomes about the idea of slavery and himself. As Douglass becomes cognitive of the meaning of his entrapment through self-education, he finds himself even more confused as he confesses the ability to read "...had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy"(68).

The irony found within the institution of slavery was such that white "Christian" Americans could justify owning another person as if it were an animal, but yet they prayed at night for their soul's salvation into the kingdom of Christ's God. Not to mention this all took place in a country founded on freedom, and on the same soil in which liberty was fought for and died for by the Whites, there were now slaves singing joyful tunes in times of hardships and despair. The life of a slave is unimaginable for most of us today, and even Douglass himself experienced horrors he wished not to remember. Even after Douglass gained the ability to read and think, as most of us take for granted today, the tangles of slavery transformed him as he became at times "...broken in body, soul, and spirit"(83). This description of himself is how I came to view a slave from the slaves perspective-- as best as I could. The slaves that could think were tortured by thought. The slaves that couldn't think were tortured by ignorance; nonetheless, slavery was torture driven by fear.

A child, such as Douglass, born into slavery survived simply by coping with the curse of enslavement and death or freedom befell those who failed to cope or chose to cope no longer. The day-to-day lives of a slave may vary greatly; some slaves worked in the house, others were allowed to work in the city, while yet others worked in the fields. The songs, beliefs, and customs of the people who carried out these activities became richly diverse in their methods of dealing with this state of living-- or lack thereof. The owners of the hundreds of thousands of slaves were as diverse as the slaves themselves. Some were horribly wicked and some were very kind. Douglass gives an insight into various types of owners and ownerships, as well as the duties performed by him in the various different tasks he was asked to perform as a slave. The everyday duties of the slave varied within the day and the lifespan of the particular slave. As Douglass illustrates, he had done everything from working for a slave breaker in Mr. Covey (although the editor questions the account) in the field to buying his own time as a calker. In any description of slavery by Douglass, regardless of duty or owner, it was a barbaric treatment, if of nothing else than the human soul, and a mistreatment of humans based on the mere facts that humans, no matter race, were deprived of their right to liberty and freedom as Douglass had come to understand them. Douglass acknowledges that his self-educated view of slavery was different from that of many ignorant slaves who had no way of understanding the curse for which they had to cope. In his own confessions, Douglass alludes to the fact that fear was the primary human emotion propelling the slave industry. Fear was a part of everyday life for a slave; fear allowed slaves to be beat into the bloody submission of their predicament, and fear also drove the white slave owners, for slaveholders could not imagine a World without slaves-- much less a World with a free Black population. To Frederick Douglass' there was nothing more barbaric and inhumane than the institution of slavery.

Douglass' account of slavery is unlike anything I had read or seen previously. Not that I would boast to be well educated on the subject of slavery, but his account gives a very painful and disturbing insight for both slave and owner. Most accounts of slavery held within contemporary history books, to the best of my knowledge, are vague in comparison to that of Douglass'. The editor and even Douglass himself argue against his accounts of slavery based on the understandably extreme emotions Douglass has against the Southern Whites and the irony of their practices of both religion and slave ownership. Most accounts of slavery try to give the historical journey of the institution;for example, accounts may start out with the capturing of slaves in Africa then they may chronologically follow a slaves life through dreadful imprisonment and loss of culture ending in an apologetic human rights movement following the Civil War in the United States. An apparent awakening is chronicled even though equal human rights was not fully nullified until nearly one-hundred years after the abolishment of slavery -and some may argue the African-American exists still as a oppressed race of people. Regardless, Douglass presents an excellent documentation of slavery comparable to no other known to me.

In his chronicles, Douglass' rhetorical accounts of slavery suggest a plague that hovers not just over the slaves, but felt by the slave-owners themselves. According to Mr. Douglass, owning a slave presents a demoralizing effect on ones soul. Douglass seems to most notice this result in his own account of his Miss Sophia; "That cheerful eye, under the influence of slavery, soon became red with rage: that voice, made all sweet accord, changed to one of harsh and horrid discord: and that angelic face gave place to that of a demon" (63). In this passage Douglass seems to recognize the transformation that takes place in human nature by owning slaves. The sweet Mrs. Auld was new to slave ownership when she met Frederick. This account of change in her suggests that ownership was possessive in nature -both for the slave and for the owner. Douglass infers this transformation of the human soul as both a necessity and a result of slave ownership. Whether Douglass infers this to justify to himself how a human could own another human, or if these transitions in human behavior actually occurred, I know not, what is apparently accurate is that it must have taken a horrible toll on ones soul to have owned and maltreated slaves in such a manner as taught in history. In the eye of the slave Douglass portrays accurately the bereavement of a slave in captivity. Within the depth of his written text one can acknowledge the pain that a slave must have felt, but never understand it. The damage to the African culture and to the African people captured and enslaved by the slave market may never be properly understood. Even Douglass struggles with understanding the entire impact of the institution of slavery within the United States. Douglass recognizes the need for song in a slaves life but is baffled at their meaning as a child. Later he comments "To those songs I trace my first glimmering conception of the dehumanizing character of slavery" (51). I decipher, by this comment, that Douglass recognizes a dehumanizing characteristic in both being a slave and in owning one. The damage compiled by all of the whole of the institution of slavery is inconceivable. There exists, even in today's time, a void in humanism that was born with the idea of slavery and the repercussions of that idea have yet to be fully revoked. If it is not the plague of ownership, or the plague of being owned that toils a nation, it is the very recognition that it ever happened that plunders us still.

To educate us all of the mishaps of slavery may be the very unrealistic goal on of Frederick Douglass. He fell short of this goal only because one insight alone cannot account for all the institution of slavery. The owners themselves were raised in a time of slavery just as the slaves were raised in the institution of slavery. Douglass cannot perceive the idea of ownership, just as owners may not perceive a free Black community. Who started the idea of slavery may never be known and is not limited to the United States. The Whites justify their actions with Biblical verses, and the slaves find their strength in equal but opposite verses within the same religion. Without a historical doubt slavery was built on an a foundation of ignorance and fear. Fear and ignorance of the South drove them to enslave the captors, and likewise fear and ignorants kept the slaves in shackles. Douglass reports that the purpose of his narrative in his own words; "Sincerely and earnestly hoping that this little book may do something toward throwing light on the American slave system, and hastening the glad day deliverance to the millions of my brethren in bonds..." By this statement alone Douglass concurs that he alone can only shine a small glimmer of light onto what is to historically known as slavery. In his account Douglass may not be historically correct in all of his personal accounts of his life, but the accuracy of his life can justify the truth of what can only be a glimmer "of light" on to the American people as to what slavery was historically. The acknowledgment of the pains of Douglass will never undo the wrong-doings of this era of Southern America or America as a whole. No justification of slavery will ever be sufficient in explaining the phenomenon, and no excuse will be tolerated. Slavery will stand alone in the darkest of American history to explain a diverse culture, the inexcusable oppression of a race, the nullification of African cultures, and the demoralization and damnation of millions of souls -which took shape in slaves and slaveholders alike.