Personification In Frederick Douglass

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In Hayden’s “Frederick Douglass,” the poet provides a glimpse of the life the Frederick Douglass and all he did to help others and himself be free. The poet starts off with, “When it is finally ours, this freedom,” he immediately reveals to the reader what the poem is about, while not putting the emphasis on the Douglass himself. He continues with, “this liberty, this beautiful and terrible thing, needful to man as air,” this expresses the characteristics of freedom. Hayden shows contrast by describing freedom as both a beautiful and terrible thing because of the history of slavery. He ended the line by describing freedom being just as important to people as air, to emphasis the pain of living without freedom feeling like not being able to breath. In line 5-6, the poet writes, “when it is finally won; when it is more than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians,” to represent what Frederick Douglass wished for and what all African Americans wished for. They wanted their freedom to be real and to no longer be something that politicians promised but could never deliver.
Hayden uses personification while saying, “when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole, …show more content…
He states, “this man, shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues’ rhetoric, not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,” (Lines 11,12) to again show Douglass’ vision that he didn’t want to be remembered in the form material and superficial means, but by the work he did, what he accomplished, and the lives he helped. This leads to the poet concluding, “but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives, fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing,” (Lines 14, 15) going back to how he started the poem, describing freedom as being beautiful, needful, but also terrible. He omits the word terrible as that is not what Frederick Douglass envisioned freedom to be and the poet no longer did
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