"Ragged Dick" Compared to Frederick Douglass

Paper Summary:

Frederick Douglass is the character of a book written by the author with the same name about the move from slavery to freedom. This paper explains how the main character of Horatio Alger's "Ragged Dick" is very similar to Douglass and how in many cases the lives of the two take parallel courses based on shared principles.

From the Paper:

"Writer Horatio Alger and the abolitionist orator Frederick Douglass were contemporaries. The time era they lived in encompassed the politically turbulent years leading up to the Civil War, the war itself, and the Reconstruction years. This was an era also of social testing. Free blacks and runaway slaves added to the ranks of the urban poor. Abolitionists wrote and lectured on the rights of all individuals. This was also an era where a person's lot in life could be changed through his or her own diligence. Abraham Lincoln, born in a log cabin in Kentucky, had risen to the highest political position in the country. John D. Rockefeller, oil tycoon and philanthropist, was on his way to being the richest man in the world. Horatio Alger's character, Ragged Dick, embodies many traits and beliefs that were present at that time. Ragged Dick started out as a street orphan and worked as a shoeshine boy on the streets of New York City."

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