There is a coarse line between what is fiction and what is not. Though many people don't keep it in mind all the time. While we tend to enjoy reading fiction due to it being mostly happy and pretty, it blurs and distorts our reality. I came to realize this after reading the first two chapters of the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: an American Slave and pondering back on my time reading Uncle Tom's Cabin.
The cruel reality lived by slaves at the end of the 19th century is bluntly shown through this narrative. It is exposed just as it happened a century ago. The truth behind history is demonstrated across Frederick Douglass' story, including bloody descriptions of whippings and melancholic sentiments. What is translated to the reader in this book is factual truth, as compared to Harriet Beecher-Stowe's fictitious novel that shows a colorful story of a somewhat unhappy slave. It doesn't tell a true story and it was crafted by the imagination of a clueless author.
Though it is a charming story that makes you wonder it doesn't tell the truth of what truly happened during that time. It lies to the reader into believing in something that didn't happen actually happened. The happy ending of the novel and the characters developed through out the narrative might have existed but only very few had the chances and luck of becoming free and living forward while many, like the ones shown in this story died by excessive whipping.
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