American Research Journal of English and Literature

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) and Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) were contemporaries who both wrote autobiographies about their experiences during a transformative time in American history. On the surface, these two men‘s autobiographies have virtually nothing in common. They are set in completely different areas of the country. Thoreau‘s Waldentakes place during a two-year, two-month, and two-day stay (compressed into a one-year narrative) in the woods near Concord, Massachusetts. On the other hand, Douglass‘ autobiography, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave Written by Himself, spans several decades and is set in a variety of locations, to include a plantation in the South and the urban city of Baltimore. Moreover, Thoreau writes his narrative from the position of a free, white, privileged, formally educated (Harvard graduate) male elite; whereas, Douglass‘s narrative is told from the worldview of a black, former slave without a formal education or prestigious family background.