“My Bondage and My Freedom” is an autobiographical account by Frederick Douglass, one of the most famous representatives of abolition movement in America. In the account as a while, he retells all his experiences as a slave. These experiences expose the horrors of slavery system, severe methods of making the slaves obedient are performed through constant whippings and floggings. The narrator himself was rarely whipped, but he had seen many instances of whipping applied against other slaves.
Along with retelling his experiences, the author tries to get into the essence of the slavery as a system and to understand why such an injustice exists and what should be done to emancipate it. A slave is not only a slave in physical sense: he stays a slave if psychological aspect – he is deprived of power of words and thoughts. Slavery has wounded African-American people deeply by taking from them human status and turning them into victims deprived of culture. Slavery has done enough to create prejudices in society, and the main prejudice is that black people can not perform intellectually as a black colors associated with subjection. Frederick Douglass proved how mistaken this assumption was, as he himself was more educated and intelligent than some white people. The search of identification for black Americans was the main goal of the narrator’s life and he spared no powers or time in accomplishing his goals.
What Frederick Douglass considered the most effective in emancipation of slavery was improvement of rights of free black people. And to this purpose he devoted his life. “My Bondage and My Freedom” is an example of eternal fight and resistance against injustice.
