When reading this section, even though he was depicting his life, at some parts it seemed that he was almost repeating himself, writing about the same thing over and over again. Through the middle at points I got confused of where he was, who his master was, and what plantation he was on.
Although some of the stories seemed to be the same many did stand out, and for good reason. The story that most stuck out to me was when he was describing watching for the first time, someone receive a whipping, which also happens to be his aunt. There is so much description in this, that even though there seems not to be too much emotion, you as reader feel emotion because of the description. Although there is some debate whether he wrote this all himself and if he made some of it up or added to it, I and not sure what I believe. I think certain things like the story of his aunt being whipped isn't something you can forget, especially since it was his first time seeing this painful part of slavery. But I think that some for the parts like where he was , and everything very descriptive isn't something you can remember that clearly for so long. If you think about it, usually people can't remember most things they did in their childhood, only certain things, maybe good or bad.
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I'm not sure if I believe he wrote this entire narrative by himself, either. It does seem highly unlikely that someone could remember exact situations in detail twenty years later. I wouldn't say that I don't believe his story or that I think a lot of it was made up, I just feel like certain parts of it might not be 100% true, or maybe they were embellished and stretched, which is of course his right as a writer.
I felt that this narrative on Frederick Douglass was at times a bit confusing also. I mean he went from one plantation to the next and from one master to another. It was hard to follow just where he was and what type of work he was doing. I found myself rereading numerous parts of this story because I would get lost. I didn't know whether he was at the great house farm or whether he had even gone to Baltimore yet. Also I didn't like that we didn't know how old he was for certain throughout the story because it would have been nice to know his age. Things will appear different at different ages and I'm sure that things seemed better or worse than they really were, but his age made a huge difference on his reactions.
I understand completely what you are saying about being confused at certain parts of Douglas' narrative. Douglas had so many different slave owners throughout his life that it was hard to keep up with who was who. It was confusing at times to relate back to previous chapters in his story and trying to remember which master was which. However, I feel that Douglas's work was so descriptive that you were almost supposed to get confused about which master was which. Not remember which master was which or anything along those lines seemed insignificant to Douglas' story though, because I was so interested in seeing what was going to happen next.
I think what you said about remembering details from childhood is very true, and he probably tried to get the details as correct as possible but that was probably hard to do. I'm sure he he used all of his knowledge to try to logically guess on details such as time frame and places. and although it is possible that he did not experience all of the things in his stories they probably came from other people's experiences which are real to the person who lived through them and therefore in my opinion are just as relavent as if they had been experienced by Douglass himself.
Laura,
I completely agree with you about Douglass’ narrative being extremely confusing at times. He jumped around a lot and left out seemingly rather important details, which only added to the confusion. I had a hard time following who he was working for; but the thing that was perhaps most confusing for me was, how did Douglass find the time to hire himself out for work when he was still a slave? Who was he a slave to at the time? And why was he allowed to do this? I was completely baffled by this.
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