Frederick Douglass


“I now come to that part of my life during which I planned, and finally succeeded in making, my escape from slavery.” This quoted which I quoted from what Frederick said, has given he a rough idea of how this journal of the day shall begin. He “was” a slave once and fought against his fate as a slave to where he is now, a “free man”. I must say, the cruelty treated towards the slaves is unbearable. The fact that they did not even allow the slaves to attain education as they are afraid that if they attain education, slaves might rebel and escape, just like Fredrick.
No one wants to be a slave, neither do Fredrick. In the means of being a slave, Fredrick was actually planning to escape, with the view of getting more money. His determination to work from day to day, night by night had really paid off. Till the day when he has the ability to escape from slavery, it is his friends that he can’t bear to say “bye”. This shows how passionate he is and that he has strong cords of affection towards his friends. Finally, he escaped and reached New York.
What I find interesting is that upon his escape, he describes his feelings as. “I felt like one who had escaped a den of hungry lions.” His contrast here of using “hungry lions” to his slavery job is something which I don’t understand. Is it that the people that he is serving and doing is as bad as lions? And hungry lions meaning they want to eat him up? Or that he is just trying to say that he is as “free” as the prey of the lions when they escaped?
benbasket at 7:57 AM