Call Of New Age And Transformation Of Identities—A Tentative Study On Frederick Douglass’s Autobiographies

Frederick Douglass, an unparalleled ethnic leader, orator, political activist and writer of the19th century America, wrote altogether three autobiographies to record his remarkable life story. The present thesis centers on the three identities he constructed in his autobiographies.The first chapter elaborates on Douglass’s ex-slave identity. In his first autobiography, Douglass devoted much of his writing to revealing the terror of slavery. He presented frequently and protractedly the scenes in which slaves’ life and esteem were brutally trampled on. By showing how he was victimized, he identified himself with his deeply-wretched fellow slaves and thus gained for himself a stronger voice in denouncing slavery after he launched his abolitionist career. Meanwhile, he distinguished himself from other slaves by showcasing what was extraordinary in him and this surely helped to dispel doubts about his phenomenal rise as an abolitionist lecturer.The second chapter deals with Douglass’s identity of a leading abolitionist and prominent political leader. It examines how the important events Douglass recorded in his autobiographies underpinned the formation of his political thoughts, the core of which included the rationality of violence, the importance of education and rights of no sex. The scenic presentation of his fight with the negro-broker Covey, which, according to his own interpretation, evoked his manhood, fully validated the import of the matter. This helped to explain why he upheld moralist and legal approaches as the best way to abolish slavery but still openly affirmed the rationality of violence. His acquisition of reading and writing skills was purported to be a critical event that changed the trajectory of his life. And that might be what underpinned his fervent advocacy of education for free blacks. In his first autobiography, slave-women were all depicted as voiceless and vulnerable, having neither will nor strength to resist. This seemingly contradicted his feminist thoughts. Nonetheless, his imitation of three important slave-women recorded in his later two autobiographies successfully negated the doubts heaped on his feminist stance. He also used narrative pauses that took no narrative time for a couple of times to fully present his insights and thus reinforced his identity of a political leader.The third chapter concentrates on Douglass’s identity of an autobiographical writer. Writing, an important edge for him in his public career, was much more than an accessory of politics. The exquisite writing skills he displayed in his autobiographies helped to consolidate his identity of an autobiographical author and thus promote African Americans’confidence in their own race. His autobiographies were characterized by richness of the texts, strong authorial control and call for readers’participation. In his autobiographies, he tactfully reversed the beast metaphors that vilified blacks and used ironies to mock white racists. His proficient use of parallelism made his autobiographical texts, especially the first one, almost as compelling as his speeches. Unlike previous slave narrators who adopted the role of a third-party observant so that their narration seemed as objective as possible, he broke this generic restriction of slave narratives and fully expressed his feelings and opinions. He attacked outright the slave-holding religion and skillfully dispelled much of the risk that might incur through his massive allusion to the Bible in his autobiographies and his confession of pious love for real Christianity in the appendix. His silence, the withdrawal of information concerning his means of escape, the supposed climax of the narrated events, manifested his refusal to indulge white readers who cared nothing but satisfying their own curiosity. Besides, Douglass adopted for a couple of times the second-person perspective to call for readers’ participation. The readers’responses he speculated actually represented his second self. The dialogism between the two selves, unlike a real dialogue where two parties take turns to speak though, added to the appeal of the text.The last chapter reveals how unreliable narration makes possible the otherwise awkward transformation of different identities. Douglass’s misreport of his birthdate exemplified extratextual unreliability in narration, namely inconsistencies between autobiographical texts and historical records. By revealing how he was deprived of basic human rights, it helped to consolidate his identity of an ex-slave. Intratextual unreliability in narration, namely the inconsistencies within the same autobiographical text, displayed Douglass’s seemingly contradictory but actually consistent feelings. It added to the readability of the text and thus helped to consolidate Douglass’s identity of an autobiographical author. Intertextual unreliability in narration, namely the inconsistencies among the three autobiographies, revealed a true and complete picture of Douglass’s life-time experiences and displayed his growth in thoughts. It highlighted his identity of an ethnic leader. As a whole, the three identities were complementary and coexistent. The author of the present thesis finds out that what motivated Douglass to rewrite his autobiography twice was primarily the need to construct and consolidate different identities in different times.