The second stage of his life begins when the seven-year-old Douglass is sent to work for a new set of masters in Baltimore. So his first turning point is sort of simplistic, but also important: realizing that he is a slave and all that that entails. But he doesn't really know for a long time that this isn't normal. He never knows his father and only meets his mother a handful of times before she dies – and then, he isn't allowed to go to her funeral. Instead, he suffers without really knowing it. He sees his Aunt Hester get beaten, for example, but he's too young to be whipped himself. He's born a slave on Colonel Lloyd's plantation, but as a child he's mostly spared the worst kinds of suffering. The first epiphany is Douglass's realization about what slavery is. These events are turning points in Douglass's life, but they also help show how he got there, and what he had to learn along the way. And if the book is like a highway map, then the mile markers are a series of "epiphanies," or moments of realization, that he has along the way. When the book ends, he gets both his legal freedom and frees his mind. At the beginning of the book, Douglass is a slave in both body and mind.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: Memoir Summaryĭouglass's Narrative is like a highway map, showing us the road from slavery to freedom.
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