In his autobiography Narrative of the Life, former slave Frederick Douglass tells the story of his life. Narrative's particular emphasis is the quality of Frederick-the-character's life while in slavery, and the process by which he improves himself and becomes a free man -- the stated concerns of the Abolitionists who made the publication of Douglass'autobiography possible. No matter what other claims are made for Narrative, the book stands incontrovertibly as the exemplar of the slave narrative genre (and his subsequent books arguably exceed the genre). Though not the first slave narrative to be published, Douglass' first account is certainly the best known. That Narrative had precursors does not, however, negate that it was instrumental in creating, or re-creating, the slave narrative -- perhaps eventually becoming the archetype of African-American biography for Douglass'successors.

Narrative is an autobiography, a form which draws upon historically-inflected methods of self-legitimization. That is, like history, autobiography confirms itself according a tautology something like "it is telling the truth because autobiography tells the truth." Few would disagree that the autobiographer, however honest or accurate s/he tries to be, will always omit things in an autobiographical narrative because it is impossible to avoid, but autobiography is ostensibly the medium for narrating a history with maximum inclusivity and accuracy (but not objectivity which is the purview of "proper" history). By writing his autobiography, Douglass asserts himself as both the master of the narrative and, via the text, as master of his own life and history. Douglass'use of the autobiographical form also forces the white reader to validate his status as person and as narrator. That is, Narrative's reader "experiences" this first-person, self-authored account of slavery, and in so doing legitimates the self-hood of both Douglass-the-author and Frederick-the-character by buttressing it with the reader's own experience. Simply by reading the words Douglass has written, even an unsympathetic audience unwittingly authenticates his existence, as person and as master of narrative. Douglass creates a narrative with archetypal force.