Although Frederick Douglass’s life narrative and Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” are works that represent two distinct literary genres—the first, an autobiographical text and the second a popular novel, the thematic preoccupation of each text is essentially the same. In both the “Narrative” and “Huckleberry Finn,” published just 40 years apart, Douglass and Twain, an African-American activist and orator and a Caucasian “humorist, lecturer, journalist and author” (Baym 1237), respectively, wrote ambitiously about a controversial subject concerning the nature of racism and its particular expression in the practice of slavery. By creating empathic and highly nuanced portraits of African-American characters, whether real or fictitious, Douglass and Twain both worked to expose the hypocrisy of white Americans who believed themselves to be civilized paragons of morality. In doing so, both authors conveyed convincingly the idea that racism as it was institutionalized in the practice of slavery not only harmed African-Americans, but also those who practiced slavery, those who were ambivalent about or seemingly oblivious to the practice, and even to the national psyche and the idea of what being an American was. In short, despite the structural differences in these texts, among the central aims of each it to point out the ways in which hypocrisy is present in white society, particularly in terms of race.

The title of Frederick Douglass’s autobiography clearly indicates that the work is a personal narrative, and it does, in fact, open with Douglass’s recounting of his birth and childhood, as well as the composition of his family. His own experiences orient the reader as to the psychological brutality of slavery and the hypocrisy of slave owners, but Douglass goes on in the narrative to make it clear that this is not only his story, but the story of all slaves. The particulars of his own story are not his alone; they could belong to any number of slaves and this fact is driven home by the way Douglass comments not only on his own experiences, but those of his fellow slaves in general. In one instance the author states, “the larger part of [whom] know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs….” (942). Each bit of detail that is offered as the background of his own life is contextualized within a larger community and its experiences. For instance, Douglass reveals that his father was a white man and that “[t]he opinion was…whispered that my master was my father,” and he also explains how “My mother and I were separated when I was but an infant—before I knew her as my mother”; however, he is quick to point out that such circumstances of birth were “common custom,” not deviations from the norm that he alone experienced (942). The fact that these types of experiences were not limited to Douglass alone is crucial. While other former slaves may have been unable to write their own stories or to gain an audience who would listen to them, Douglass speaks not only for himself, but for them, and in detailing the kinds of cruel practices typical of slavery, he exposes just how perverse and hypocritical this system of human bondage was.

Douglass writes movingly about the pervasiveness of racial hypocrisy at this point in American history, and none of his life experiences is more moving than that of meeting his new mistress, whom he initially perceived as a “woman of the kindest heart and finest feelings” (945). Douglass was first puzzled and then admiring of the woman, who “had never had a slave under her control,” who had “been dependent upon her own industry for a living,” and who generally seemed an altogether progressive individual. Douglass was, in fact, “utterly astonished at her goodness,” which was expressed in her refusal to expect or demand the “crouching servility” that typically characterized the posture of the slave when facing his or her master or mistress (945). The mistress was, in fact, so beatific that everyone was “put fully at ease in her presence,” everyone felt “better for having seen her,” and her “face was made of heavenly smiles, and her voice of tranquil music” (945). The blow is all the more cruel then when the woman’s “cheerful eye [and demeanor]…soon became red with rage” “under the influence of slavery” (945). The ability of slavery to corrupt even the most liberally-minded person is revealed by Douglass in this passage, and the mistress’s cruelty is considered, both by Douglass and the reader, to be among the worst types of hypocrisy possible, for the mistress clearly knew the difference between morality and immorality, but she chose to capitulate to the pressure exerted upon her by her race and class. The betrayal is profound. Slavery, Douglass writes, “divest[ed] her of these heavenly qualities,” and ultimately “proved as injurious to her” as it did to Douglass himself (947).