1. Why do you think it was important for slave owners to keep slaves ignorant about their birthdays and parentage? Douglass opens his story by telling us that he is troubled by not knowing when he was born. Why is this fact so important to him? 2. List the turning […]

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aft toward the back of a boat. Alexandrian Library the greatest library in the classical world, located in northern Egypt, on the Mediterranean Sea. arraigned before a court charged with an offense in court. ascertain to make certain. blasphemy profane, a sacrilege. blighting a scourge, devastation. bow the forward end […]

Read more Study Help Full Glossary for The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave

Frederick Douglass wrote two more memoirs about his life: My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881). Both of these autobiographies are much longer than the Narrative and provide more of Douglass’ views about racism and civil rights in the South, as well as […]

Read more Critical Essays Douglass’ Other Autobiographies

Frederick Douglass was certainly not the only slave who wrote a narrative about his or her condition. Other slaves like Olaudah Equiano, Harriet Jacobs, and Phillis Wheatley also wrote important autobiographies. Douglass’ slave narrative, however, remains the most popular and the most widely studied slave autobiography in high schools and […]

Read more Critical Essays Douglass’ Canonical Status and the Heroic Tale

Like other border states such as Delaware and Kentucky, Maryland was politically and socially tied to both the North and the South. Its urban areas were primarily Northern in character, but the eastern part of the state, around the Tidewater region had an agrarian economy which was supported by slaves. […]

Read more Critical Essays Slavery in Maryland

The issues of slavery and the rights of states to decide for themselves the slave question dominated domestic politics in the first half of the nineteenth century. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 essentially grew out of existing state and federal laws regarding the capture of escaped slaves. Colonial-era laws […]

Read more Critical Essays The Fugitive Slave Act

The first African to arrive in the New World is believed to have accompanied Christopher Columbus on one of his voyages to the Americas; African slaves began arriving shortly after 1492. There are records of slaves being in Haiti by 1501. The first blacks arrived in the British colonies almost […]

Read more Critical Essays Slavery in the United States

One of Douglass’ central goals is to debunk the mythology of slavery. Mythologies are institutionalized beliefs or ideologies, often accepted without question by the public. Southerners and some Northerners held certain beliefs about slavery which helped them rationalize its existence. First, some believed that slavery was justifiable because it seemed […]

Read more Critical Essays Slavery as a Mythologized Institution

In the eighteenth century, autobiography was one of the highest forms of literary art. Fiction was deemed unworthy, while narration of facts was aesthetically and philosophically pleasing. This prevailing convention overwhelmed fiction to such a degree that many novelists passed their works off as non-fiction, sometimes by creating prefaces written […]

Read more Critical Essays The Autobiography as Genre, as Authentic Text

Frederick Douglass was a fiery orator and his speeches were often published in various abolitionist newspapers. Among his well-known speeches is “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro,” presented in Rochester, New York, on July 5, 1852, a version of which he published as a booklet. It is often […]

Read more Critical Essays The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro