Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

In Chapter 10, Douglass includes an extended apostrophe (an address in which someone directly addresses someone who isn’t present or isn’t alive, is inanimate, or is unlikely to respond). The apostrophe begins this way: “You are loosed from your moorings, and are free; I am fast in my chains, and am a slave!”

What insights can Douglass express throughout this apostrophe that he cannot express another way? How does this address express Douglass’s fullest articulation of the evils of slavery? How is the apostrophe representative of other moments or passages in the narrative? What makes this apostrophe such a powerful and memorable passage from this text?   

Teaching Suggestion: This passage is in many ways a culmination of Douglass’s personal deliverance from slavery and a climax of his personal journey. It expresses perhaps his most anguishing desire for freedom in the narrative and marks the clearest denunciation of the immorality and unnatural nature of slavery. It includes his life-changing decision: “I have only one life to lose. I had as well be killed running as die standing.” Douglass’s language is powerful; he combines his straightforward prose style, sophisticated rhetorical use of chiasmus and anaphora, and the language he would have learned from the King James Bible.