Worldview Guide for the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Canon Classics Worldview Guides

by Jake Meador

"In a day when most anything can be rendered disposable, Americans are not accustomed to keeping things that remind them of times of darkness, sadness, or failure. We do not keep the nameplate from the job where we were fired. We do not keep the bad report card or the paper that got an F.... Nationally, we do not build monuments to commemorate our nation's greatest failures. There is no Richard Nixon Memorial in Washington, nor is there a pillar to commemorate the Great Depression erected anywhere near Wall Street, though one can't help wondering if things might have played out differently in 2008 if there were. In America we forget the bad and try to remember the positive. We are the consummate optimists. This idea of a negative memorial, something we keep that serves as a warning to us of the dire consequences of falling into sin, is perhaps a useful starting place for considering Frederick Douglass's remarkable Narrative. If we are to understand both the good and the bad in America, there may be no better text to begin with than with this book." ~ from Jake Meador's guide The Canon Classics Worldview Guides provide an aesthetic and thematic Christian perspective on the most definitive and daunting works of Western Literature. The Worldview Guides focus on the big picture (both the good and the bad) without neglecting the details. Each Worldview Guide is a friendly literary coach--and a treasure map, and a compass, and a key -- to help teachers, parents, and students appreciate, critique, and master the classics. The bite-size WGs are divided into these ten sections (with some variation due to genre): Introduction, The World Around, About the Author, What Other Notables Said, Setting, Characters, & Argument, Worldview Analysis, Quotables, 21 Significant Questions & Answers, and Further Discussion & Review.

52 pages, Paperback

Published April 28, 2018

Reviews

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Douglass' autobiography was somewhat earth-shaking for me, so I felt the need to have some kind of conversation with someone about it. As such, I picked up this book (pamphlet?). I was pretty impressed in that it distilled the main points down well, and touched on (in an incomplete, food for thought kind of way) many of the main questions I had after reading the book. I would have loved if it was longer, but understand the need to remain punchy (especially given the high-school supplement market it's written for). Overall, highest praise is probably that it makes me want to get more of these guides.