Frederick Douglass is the protagonist of his own memoir, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, penned by the famous former slave and orator himself and published in 1845, greatly influencing the abolitionist movement. He describes the evils and brutality of the slave system into which he was born, he knows not what year. Very possibly the son of the plantation owner, Frederick never really knows his mother, having been separated from her at a very young age. Frederick paints a picture for us of a world cruelly experienced, of a world in which one human can be owned by another, in which overwork and beatings are the everyday norm. From such oppressive beginnings, the mighty spirited Frederick rises to undreamt of heights, self-educating and paving the road to personal enlightenment. Never does he stray from his commitment to assisting those whose fate matched his own and to abolishing the demonic system that allowed it to be so.
