An Individual and Collective Struggle

One important question Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass raises is the extent to which the memoir encompasses an individual and collective experience. While Fredrick Douglass recounts his personal journey from enslavement to freedom, there are many moments in the memoir in which he describes slaves’ collective struggle and implies that identifying with his fellow slaves is a form of empowerment.

Douglass’ close relationship with Mr. Freeland’s other slaves highlights his propensity to identify with others who experience the same conditions. He describes himself and his fellow slaves as “linked and interlinked with each other” and writes that he “loved them with a love stronger than any thing I have experienced since” (1219). His description of the intense and enduring emotional connection he shares with them suggests he views them not only as a community, but also as a kind of metaphorical family that transcends blood relations. Part of this connection is rooted in the slaves’ shared experience and subjection to horrific physical and emotional hardship; however, he also implies that his relationship with other slaves makes him feel safe and protected. Douglass writes that the slaves “never moved separately,” and that he is “anxious to have them participate with me in this, my life-giving determination [to secure freedom from enslavement]” (1219).

 Despite his desire to secure all of the slaves’ freedom, Douglass’ first attempt to organize a collective escape ultimately fails, and his ambiguous account of his successful journey to freedom implies that he was braves it alone. Interestingly, when Douglass first reaches freedom in the North, he describes himself as “in the midst of thousands, and yet a perfect stranger” and he feels displaced without the support and comfort of his fellow slaves. Furthermore, he exhibits a fear of strangers that has been engrained in him from his interactions with untrustworthy, white southerners. He sees “in every white man an enemy, and in almost every colored cause for distrust” because his traumatic experiences have taught him that he can only rely on the other slaves. While Douglass’ culminating achievement of freedom seems like an individual act, his escape enables him to record—in writing and speech—the tragedies he and his fellow slaves experienced together. His freedom also allows him to work toward freeing all enslaved African Americans. He never fully becomes disconnected from the slaves he grew up with despite his physical dislocation from the South.