Trauma of Violence in Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

Abstract

Frederick Douglass’s autobiographical novel, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845) is one of the most widely read slave narratives. It is a tale of a slave who transforms himself from a slave to a free man at the end. The novel is set in the South American continent and the subject matter of the novel is the domination of the slaves by their white masters. This thesis is the study of trauma of violence in Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. It is concentrated on the violence over slaves in South America. It aims to find out African American slaves’ position in America during the time of slavery. It observes how the inhuman bondage of slavery harassed and exploited the slaves resulting to trauma and how the same trauma of violence guides the slaves to get release from the injustice and inhuman cruelties of whites. In this research, the tool of cultural trauma is applied. It aims at setting the new ground through the analysis of this novel in the light of trauma theory with special focus on cultural trauma as posited by Jeffrey C. Alexander, Ron Eyerman, Dominick La Capra, Neil J. Smelser and so on. The finding of this research is that trauma does not occur only in the sophisticated groups, it occurs in all the people from different race, tribe, culture, religion, society and different strata of people. Next finding is that cultural trauma is a form of social change. At present, trauma is not confined within the western world, it has spread all over the world hence it is a global issue.