How could the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass be summarized? What are the most important issues Douglass addresses in his narrative?

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is Douglass's own account of his escape from slavery, written in 1845. The most important issues he addresses in his account are the horrors of slavery, the corrupting effect that slavery has on white slaveowners, and the need for slavery to be abolished. He makes the point that true Christians abhor slavery and that the Christianity practiced by slaveowners does not represent true Christianity. His book became a bestseller, though many people at first doubted that a slave could write such an eloquent work. However, Douglass's speeches proved that he was a brilliant man who was capable of writing and thinking, and he therefore did a great deal to show the potential of African-Americans. 

Douglass narrates his early childhood on a plantation in Talbot County, Maryland, including his separation from his mother at a young age and his presumption that the slave master, Captain Anthony, was his biological father. He recounts the abuses his aunt suffered from the overseer, probably because he was jealous of her relationship with another slave.

He then tells of his experience as an urban slave in Baltimore, Maryland. His slave mistress, Sophia Auld, begins to teach him to read, but then she is roundly criticized for doing so and stops. He makes the point that slavery corrupts slaveowners and makes them abusive and inhuman. He bribes local children into teaching him to read, as he always has bread in his pocket, and he realizes that reading will give him the arguments to defeat slavery. His life as an urban slave is very different from those of most slaves, who were on plantations.

In the third section, he is returned to the plantation, where he contends with a cruel slave master. In one critical passage, a fellow slave gives him a root, and though Douglass states that he does not believe in slave superstitions, the root clearly gives him the psychological strength to take on the overseer. The overseer, Mr. Covey, does not bother Douglass again. Douglass is sent to another plantation, where he teaches the other slaves to read and begins to feel like they are the family he never had. However, they are all sent to jail when their plotted escape fails.

Douglass is then sent back to Baltimore, where he learns how to caulk boats, which gives him a skill he can use when he escapes north. He has to turn all his wages over to his master, Hugh Auld, but he can at times earn his own money. Douglass faces continual harassment and intimidation from his fellow dock workers, who are white. Eventually, he escapes north from Baltimore to Philadelphia and then to New York by disguising himself as a sailor, though he declines to give many details of his escape (so that he will not endanger the route for future slaves who try to escape). He eventually became a skilled orator on the abolitionist circuit as well as a writer and reformer, and settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where there was a community of free African-Americans at the time.