I must be honest, the ending on
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave was disappointing, yet really exciting for me. As you can infer from my previous blog posts, I adored how Douglass' seemingly made every part of his past a sort of epitome of tragedy... at first. Yes, it's beautifully written, and the imagery that Douglass creates is superb,
but, after one-hundred-ten odd pages of constant reminders about the cruelty and suffering he endured during his life, I felt drowned in an abyss of relentless sorrow and incessant pleads for sympathy. At the beginning, Douglass' explicit detail was powerful, as was the case when he portrays the violent whipping of aunt Hester: "And after rolling up his sleeves, he commenced to lay on the heavy cowskin, and soon the warm, red blood (amid heart-rending shrieks from her, and horrid oaths from him) came dripping to the floor" (page 22). However, he continued this trend, as I stated above, to a tiring point: "I did not allow myself a single word; but was resolved, if he laid the weight of his hand upon me, it should be blow for blow" (page 103). His unending use of pathos, his search for sympathy, and his ludicrous descriptions of, well, everything, made the book overwhelming, if not mundane, to me as I felt he was simply exaggerating to get his point across.
However, as I have mentioned in previous blog posts, I don't want you to think I am a cold-hearted person in any way. I sympathize this man's story, his suffering, his past. What I do not relish, though, is his book. To me, it was simply a burdensome task to read all of his preposterous portrayals of events and ,unfortunately, this translated into my animosity of the narrative.
animosity: noun- extreme dislike, hatred.
Abyss: noun- an immeasurably deep chasm, depth, or void.
incessant: adjective- (of something regarded as unpleasant) unending, continuous.
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