Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass

In Chapter Eleven, Douglass physically escapes from slavery, and later psychologically escapes by changing his name from Frederick Bailey to Frederick Douglass. He marries, earns employment and keeps his own wages, and embraces abolitionism. When he escaped from the South he felt a "moment of the highest excitement I ever experience," (74) and later marveled that "I was now my own master" (79). He turns his discerning eye upon the people of New Bedford and observes a world without the crippling effects of slavery. At the very end of the autobiography, he begins a new chapter of his life as a public figure: he begins to share his story, which will become a central narrative in the abolitionist movement. Like most autobiographies, he has charted his path from ignorance to enlightenment, from boy to man, from literal slave to master. He is now autonomous, fully individualized, and a member of the human community.