Mira Lora

Ms. Woelke

AP English Language

2019 September 18

Frederick Douglass Close Read #1

In Frederick Douglass’ excerpt of his book ​The Narrative of Frederick Douglass ​he uses

direct characterization, a simile, brutish diction, a reference to a poem, sight imagery, and

repetition to express his grandmother’s treatment during her last dying days as a slave after

being loyal for so many years. Douglass refers to his grandmother’s life as an infernal after

describing her time serving his old master faithfully from youth to old age. He continues to speak

about all the accomplishments she had done for her master, being the “source of all his wealth”

(Douglass 11). His grandmother raised her master and even out-lived him, and at his death

divided to a stranger that she barely knew as a new master. Through his whole excerpt, Douglass

shows the loneliness his grandmother felt while on her deathbed, left alone to die like cattle. He

also uses a simile to compare slaves to livestock rather than human beings, because of the way

they were continuously treated like property, or like animals. Douglass expresses his own

experience watching his “poor old grandmother” live a life as a faithful slave but die without

emotion or remorse from others.

Frederick Douglass reveals that at the end of his grandmother’s life, her new owners

found her of little value and decided to wait out her death by enclosing her in a little hut in the

woods to support herself on her own in perfect loneliness. But before telling his audience about

his grandmother’s fate he assures them that his poor old grandmother “had served his old master
faithfully from youth to old age”(Douglass 9-11). This directly characterizes his grandmother as

loyal, hardworking, and obviously compliant, which shows the type of woman and slave she was

and especially the type of treatment she deserved because of her wonderful aspects. Later on

Douglass conveys that his grandmother’s master had died and after years of her servitude and

struggle, she still remained a slave, and because of her old age, deemed invaluable, not seen, or

acknowledged by the hard work she had done in her lifetime. She continued to be a slave after

her master died, “divided, like so many sheep” to strangers who did not know her life story and

“without being gratified with the small privilege of a single word, as to her own

destiny”(Douglass 20-21). Douglass’ grandmothers saw her loved ones and family members

being divided and bought off like livestock, as if they were just animals with no reasoning or

thinking. This blunt simile shows the barbarity and inhumanity of slavery, revealing its

detrimental flaws and psychological inadequacies because of its ignorance towards the fact that

slaves are humans too and have feelings because of it. Frederick Douglass’ grandmother endured

so much just to be treated as if her livelihood was inconvenient and unwanted, and nevertheless,

she was not set free.