As I was reading the Narrative of Frederick Douglass an American Slave, I found myself continuously comparing Frederick Douglass to Solomon Northup, the protagonist of 12 Years a Slave. Both Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave and 12 Years a Slave succeed in convincing their audience of the brutality of slavery by showing a typical slave's life, rather than telling a story of the normal routine of a slave. Both narrators include clear, direct descriptions of their lives, emotions, and thoughts that speak the truth without using fancy literary devices.
Both works also show that a slave is made from his or her birth. A slaveowner basically controls the knowledge of the slaves and obliterates their personal history in order to turn them into voiceless properties that have no right or choice to seek knowledge. Douglass describes this phenomenon of slaves not being treated as humans by stating, "By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant" (Page 17). Likewise, in 12 Years a Slave, as Northup immediately begins protesting his imprisonment by insisting that he was no man's slave, the slave dealers whip and threaten to murder Solomon if he ever mentions freedom again. They stole his past by asserting that he is an escaped slave instead of a free man.
Additionally, both narrators seek to be different from the slaves. They both believed that knowledge was a path to freedom. Throughout the first four chapters, Douglass foreshadows future events of being an author and describes how ignorant he was when he was a slave by stating: "I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meaning of those rude and apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle" (Page 27). This implies that the knowledge Douglass had when he was a slave was nothing compared to the knowledge he gained after becoming a writer. Like Frederick Douglass, Solomon Northup found it easier to escape slavery because he had more knowledge than the other slaves in the plantation, even though he was vulnerable to being caught because of his ability to read and write.
