Frederick Douglass My Bondage My Freedom: Craft Essay

The autobiographical memoir can be written from either the first person or third person perspective, which also can be labeled the field or observer perspectives. When writing memoirs from the first person perspective, writers see the event associated with the memory through their eyes, as if they were reliving the experience. This is what Fredrick Douglass does in his second memoir My Bondage My Freedom.  Douglass achieves flawless poetry within the narration that sets the literary mark for all others to achieve. This can be seen in Douglass’ opening lines:

“When a man rises himself from the lowest condition in society to the highest, mankind pay(s) him the tribute of their admiration; when he accomplishes this elevation by native energy, guided by prudence and wisdom, their admiration is increased …” (Douglass 21).

            The typical formula of slave narrative consists of any chronicle, or a considerable excerpt of the life, of a fugitive/former slave, which is either written or spoken by the slave them selves. From 1760 to the end of the Civil War in the United States, nearly one hundred autobiographies of fugitive/former slaves appeared. After slavery was abolished in North America in 1865, at least fifty former slaves wrote or dictated book-length accounts of their lives as well. The first fugitive slave narrative in the United States, the Life of William Grimes, the Runaway Slave, Written by Himself in 1825, which declared for the first time to readers in the North the horrors of chattel slavery in the American South and the pervasiveness of racial injustice in New England.  Douglass’ example of reaching the literary mark of Slave Narratives can be seen further in the same sentence when he writes:

“He (the former slave) becomes a burning light and a shining light, on which the aged may look with gladness, the young with hope, and the down-trodden, as a representative of what they themselves become.  To such a man, dear reader, it is my privilege to introduce you.’ (Douglass 21).

         Slave narratives compose one of the most significant traditions in American literature, constructing the form and themes of the utmost celebrated and controversial writing, in the history of the United States.  In the late summer of 1831 in Southampton County, Virginia, an uprising of slaves aroused by Prophet Nat Turner defined the approaching crisis into which slavery was taking the nation. Before they were apprehended by state and federal troops, Turner’s relatively disciplined army executed sixty whites, including Prophet Nat’s master and family. After dictating a narrative, which was hurried into publication, Nat Turner’s book was published under the title The Confessions of Nat Turner, making his narrative the first of its kind. Nat Turner the leader of the most successful slave revolt in U.S. history was hanged on November 11, 1831 ––– fourteen years before the publication of Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, an American Slave. It is estimated that fifty thousand copies of Turner’s decidedly unrepentant “confessions” were printed, making this the most widely read African American slave narrative of its time. Between 1846 and 1855 twenty-one other slave narratives and been written and published.  These authors include Solomon Northrop, William Wells Brown, Henry Bibb, Wilson Armistead, Austin Steward and James Pennington (Douglass xix)

           

Generally profound emotional and stressful events are written in third person. An author may begin with memories in order to analyze the experience from a visual perspective and what today we call symptoms of PTSD.  Ironically PTSD, in today’s society of writers, is found in nearly half of the authors who recalled their trauma from the third person perspective and narrated the trauma from the third person. The third person perspective may serve as one subjective method to help reduce the anxiety associated with trauma. Ironically enough Douglass didn’t write My Bondage and My Freedom from a third person point of view, and is written with a more mature style that tends to be more full, broad, intricate and more explicatory than his Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, an American Slave.  There can be no indecency without shame, no cruelty without fear, and no murder without concern.  Douglass even though this quote is in regard to a mans character, could fit what he is doing with his writing:

“Reason is imprisoned here, and passions run wild.  Like the fires of the prairie, once lighted, they are at the mercy of every wind, and must burn, till they have consumed all that is combustible…” (Douglass 72).

 The writing style of Douglass is a complex puzzle.  His courage, opulence and ephemerality are considered part of the style of the man –– and is the man. We can describe his extraordinary polish in the writing style as the outcome of careful gentility that was acquired while he was abroad.  He wrote it in first person, even some of the most horrific scenes; one example:

“The cowardly creature made his every threat; and wielded the lash with all the hot zest of furious revenge.  The cries of the woman (Nelly), while undergoing the terrible infliction, were mingled with those of the children, sounds which I hope the reader may never be called upon to hear.  When Nelly was united her back was covered in blood (Douglass 82) I aim only to give the reader a truthful impression of my slave life, without affecting him with harrowing details (170).”

In comparison when acknowledging memories from the third person perspective, individuals literally see themselves in that memory, that moment. As if they were a viewer watching the remembered event. Autobiographical memories are automatically recalled from the third person perspective, and the rest from the first person perspective. The closest Douglass gets to writing in the third person is when he is referencing his time speaking to “secure subscribers” for the Anti-Slavery Standard and the Liberator:

“I was generally introduced as a ‘chattel’ –– a ‘thing’ –– a piece of southern ‘property’ –– the chairman assuring the audience that ‘it’ could speak.  Fugitive slaves, at that time, were not so plentiful as now; and as a fugitive slave lecturer, I had the advantage of being a ‘brand new fact –– the first one out’ (Douglass 269).

Visual perspective plays a critical role in the psychodynamic process; which is related to early memories and third person memories demonstrate a reconstructive nature to those memories. “It did not entirely satisfy me to narrate wrongs; I felt like denouncing them” (Douglass 269). The shift from the first person to the third person perspective can be seen as a function of the interval between encoding the event and retrieving the memory.  “A man is sometimes made great, by the greatness of the abuse a portion of mankind may think proper to heap upon him” (Douglass). Some view third person memories as serving a distancing function when the individual recalls a memory of an event that is incongruent with the current self:

“America will not allow her children to love her.  She seems bent on compelling those who would be her warmest friends, to be her worst enemies.  May God give her repentance, before it is too late, is the ardent prayer of my heart.  I will continue to pray, labor, and wait, believing that she cannot always be insensible to the dictates of justice, or deaf to the voice of humanity” (Douglass 275).

Visual perspective and memory are central roles involving the self-related process and motive. Yet the self and memory do not typically take into account visual perspective. Although this emphasizes the importance of the self and the process of memory retrieval, many do not and or cannot determine the sophisticated and definitive self-evaluative process that can influence the retrieval of autobiographical memories. Douglass, in my opinion was able to decipher this process and write about visual prospective. 

“The truth is, the people here (Great Britain) know nothing of the republican hate prevalent in our glorious land. They measure and esteem men according to their moral and intellectual worth, and not according to the color of their skin” (Douglass 278).

The expression and synthesis of this evolution in memory retrieval does help construct the visual perspective in literature as well as offer new guidelines: to express the self-evaluative development that contributes to autobiographical memories, and to consider how visual perspective stimulates the processes of autobiographical memory retrieval. Douglas creates for us, the reader, a divine way ––– in the form of a proposition in Douglass own internal voice ––– from slavery to freedom.  Not just an illumination but also a strengthening of the text and his description.

“There is not, beneath the sky, an enemy to filal affection so destructive as slavery.  It had made my brothers and sisters strangers to me; it converted the mother that bore me into a myth (Douglas 57).

If there is a time gap since the event occurred, it can sway whether the experience is recalled from the first or the third person. Recent autobiographical memories tend to be recalled from the first person perspective, whereas remote memories, particularly early childhood memories, are more likely to be recalled from the third person perspective.  Douglass does this by coiling the anxiety in ways he had not done in Fredrick Douglass, an American Slave.

“Faraway, back in the hazy distance, where all forms seemed but shadows, under flickering light of the north star –– behind some craggy hill or snow-covered mountain –– stood a doubtful freedom, half frozen, beckoning us to her icy domain” (Douglass xxxiii).

Furthermore, the portion of third person memories that can be reclaimed increases through our adulthood, continuing well into old age. Flashbulb memories –– those that are highly detailed and exceptionally vivid –– may be one exception to this shift.  This is in opposition to our everyday memories, which tend to shift from first person to third person over a period of time. Flashbulb memories tend to remain in the viewpoint embraced immediately following the event.  This can ideally seen when Douglass speaks of the tremendous sorrow he has over his mother:

“It has been a life-long, standing grief to me, that I know so little of my mother, and that I was so early separated from her.  The side view of her face is imaged on my memory, and I take few steps in life, without feeling her presence; but the image is mute, and I have no striking words of hers treasured up” (Douglass 55).

The person’s reason to act and their emotional being at the time of repossession, has been guided by experience. Individuals that are provisionally driven to focus on their feelings about an experience are more likely to recall the event from the first person. People who are driven to focus on the concrete and objective circumstances of their experience are more likely to recall the event from the third person. Memories that are found by people currently these found memories see these experiences as positive or negative for personal reasons –– incidents that would not necessarily be emotional for most people. These types of memory are more likely to be recalled from the first person perspective. Neutral memories, however, are more likely to be observed from the third person perspective. In contrast and consistent with the idea that a concentration of the self during our daily preparation is associated with third person memories, this can be found when memories of highly self-conscious experiences ––such as events that elicit pride or shame–– tend to be retrieved from the third person rather than the first person perspective. The influence of a person's emotional state on visual perspective suggests the possibility that the sensitivity at time of retrieval can increase the likelihood that the memory will be recalled from the first person. However, sensitivity at time of encoding increases the likelihood that the memory will be recalled from the third person.

Works Cited

Douglass, Frederick. My Bondage My Freedom. Ed. George Stade. New York City: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2005.