Douglass understands the importance of name which represent an assertion of identity, and identity is freedom: "I subscribe myself" -- I write my self down in letters, I underwrite my identity and my very being, as indeed I have done in and all through the foregoing narrative that has brought me to this place, this moment, this state of being." (Douglas 75 in Davis, Gates 157). This is why he changed his name to Douglass when he reached New Bedford (Lampe vii). Douglass confesses that in the past, it was "still dangerous, in Massachusetts, for honest men to tell their names," (Ibid) in the sense that name equaled identity, and it was forbidden for slaves to assume their own.

In his, "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave," Douglass paints a very vivid picture of slavery. In addition to being historically valuable, his book is an accomplished...
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