Douglass’s Journey and His Authentic Narrative
Here is my personal lesson that I have learned when I was an exchange student in America. Even if I was not fully good at speaking English, I could learn that true heart with authentic attitude is somewhat stronger expression than the language itself when talking to people. What I realized is that as long as I have true heart to communicate with people, then they would understand well regardless of the language. Authenticity is a great word. It sometimes lets people moved and persuaded. Frederick Douglass who wrote Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass in the 19th century was such a true and authentic person who was able to make things changed. His truthful and faithful work has a strong power to persuade people living in that period even for people who are living in the current eras. Like the subtitle of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass shows, “Written by Himself”, he is telling the readers how genuine the story is from his own direct voice. His several writing styles he uses in the story turn to be successful in delivering his trustworthy statements. Especially, the use of first-person perspective and revealing his “psychological and intellectual struggle” are acting well as a great piece of work to persuade people with true and authentic heart.
Frederick Douglas’s life journey begins at the point where he was born into a slavery. His father was a white man and mom was a slave. Even if he had mom, he couldn’t live with her since he was born. Douglass had gone through this suffering life as a slave almost for 21 years before he escaped from his slavery life to freedom toward the North. Russell Reising praises Frederick Douglass in The Unusable Past that he is the most important person to arouse African American’s voice to revive in ‘American Renaissance’ where many voices of Caucasian writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry D. Thoreau, or Nathaniel Hawthorne were overwhelming around the period...