The narrative of life of Frederick Douglass
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Slaves were brought because of the economic benefits, instead of racism or anything else. Also, for slaves and the North, it was presented as a way to prosperity.
At that time, slavery was shown as a dream life so that white Americans can believe in it. And they did because slave masters attempted to present it in this way.
The Civil war was about slavery. It was started because the Northern states did not want to abolish slavery.
Douglass did not know his age as all the other slaves
Douglass uses an oratory style, so he uses a lot of rhetorical devices that are commonly used in the speech. His accent is on sound and literary features.
Slaves were basically dehumanized. No date of birth, no family around you, no reasons to think, no desire to escape.
Frederick Douglass tried to explain how slavery works
Rape was a common thing back then
Firstly, his mother was sent to the other plantation, so she could not see her own son, but the slaves were not locked at night. So, every night she walked back to the sonâs plantation to see him, and she went back by sunrise. (p. 18).
Douglass wants to say that the families were separated on purpose. Also, the main purpose of the slaves was to be economically beneficial labour. So, one of the key features of slavery is to make sure that none of the slaves wants to escape. The more masters treat them like animals, the less the slaves are thinking of escaping.
It was simply the most profitable and easiest way to maintain cheap labour (p. 19).
The worst effect is that often women were raped. So, to prevent the situation where the masters had half slaves/half normal, they were treated as slaves.
"to administer to their own lust, and make gratification their wicked desires, as profitable and pleasurable." (p 19) It was cheaper and quicker to make the female slaves have children. They were already on the plantation and could not be bought from other slave sellers. They were free, and there was no effort and money spent raising a child on the farm.
The worst effect of this is that they were raped by these masters, therefore they were the half-sisters of the "legitimist family" where they have their siblings whip them. The children would end up getting sold off. They were most afraid to be sold off to another plantation because you donât know what would have happened to them, donât know if they will get treated worse and they will be separated from their family.
Whipping and selling were a way to punish the slave for certain actions, but also to remind others of the cruelty of the punishment. Other slaves saw the punished man, and this way, they were warned about possible outcomes for not following the rules (p. 24)
Douglass referred to slaves who do not do what they were told to as âunmanageableâ.
âThey find less difficulty from the want of beds than from the want of time to sleepâ (p. 25)
Basically, the slaves did not have enough time to sleep because of the number of chores and work, so there was no need for beds.
It wasn't necessary to have beds... because the slaves were working in their "free time". they were cooking, cleaning, and washing that by the time all that they would need to get up again and start farming. (p. 25)
They were supposed to sing these âhappyâ songs to imitate the happiness. In fact, the tone and sentiment were the opposite of each other, and the songs did not have any effect (p. 27)
The great house Farm wasn't a pleasant song to the slaves. It was sung when slaves were most unhappy. it represents the sorrow in their hearts. (p. 28)
Addressing people who have seen slaves on the slave plantation and interpreted them incorrectly and telling them what was going on. And they weren't happy singing but sad.
He describes their tunes and how they would sing and adds that he has âthought that the hearing of these songs would do more to impress some minds with the horrible character of slavery, than the reading of whole volumes of philosophy on the subject would do.â People used the fact that slaves sang to say that they were happy, but in reality, the meaning of these songs was far more profound and of despair. (p. 27)
Frederik Douglass addresses the white people, who might have had or at least seen the slaves. So he is trying to explain how slavery works and that it should not exist.
The slaves werenât taught how to read and write, so they cannot communicate.
If a slave was caught with any tar, it meant that he was in the garden, so he was whipped by the chief gardener (p. 29)
the slaves were afraid of the tar, as it was a sign to their master that they were in the fruit garden, where they were not allowed to go. If there was tar on the person, they would have gotten punished and whipped for having been or trying to get into the garden. (p. 29)
Because sometimes spies were sent among the slaves, slaves were saying that the masters were kind to prevent the punishment(p. 32)
The slaves did not know who exactly even might be the spy. So they were afraid of everyone asking these questions.
This way, they were trying to gain any goodness. Also, slaves believed in almost any prejudice they heard about, so it was easy to make them think that the cruellest master could be the kindest (p. 32).
Mr Gore whipped Demby a few times and ran into the water to hide from the master. Mr Gore called his name 3 times and then shot him. The explanation was that âDemby became unmanageableâ, and it might have led to sabotaging other slaves if Demby. (p. 36)
He ran away because he was done being whipped. Gore was sure that Demby would come out of the water, but he did not, so he had to shoot to show other slaves that he was serious about everything he was saying.
(Page 36) âHe argued that if one slave refused to be corrected and escaped with his life, the other slaves would soon copy the example, the result of which would be the freedom of the slaves and the enslavement of the whites. Mr Gore's defence was satisfactory. He continued in his station as overseer upon the home plantation. His fame as an overseer went abroad. His horrid crime was not even submitted to judicial investigation.â
It was thought that if one slave refused to be punished and corrected, every slave would become unmanageable and uncontrollable. (p. 36)
There were 2 reasons for that: no one cared, which supported the slavery institution. Referring to the Demby case, Gore had to shoot to maintain control over other slaves, and it was the only way to do it as soon as Demby jumped into the water.
Douglass had almost no clothes, so he suffered from cold during winters. As a result, his feet had wounds the size of a pen (p. 40)
The fact that his feet were mangled showed how badly he was treated.
âI must get all the dead skin off my feet and knees before I could go to Baltimore; for the people in Baltimore were very cleanly, and would laugh at me if I looked dirtyâ (p. 40)
The literal meaning is that he was forced to clean himself to get the trousers and look more appropriate. However, it is symbolic because the time spent in Baltimore represented the other part of his life when he started to think of escaping. He was scraping his skin as if he is reborn like a phoenix.
The new mistress did not act with him as an item. She was kind towards him because she did not have slaves before and was not spoiled by society. (p. 44)
She was a semi-slave before. Also, she was not used to using slaves. Slavery dehumanizes the master's world. Otherwise, the system does not work.
In his opinion, learning to read will make the slave unmanageable because reading will âspoilâ the slave and make him unhappy. Also, âit was unlawful, as well as unsafeâ (p. 45)
Itâs ironic because the more Frederick Douglass reads and learns, the more he is unhappy, he does become unmanageable, and he is trying to escape from this situation.
He had the greatest desire to escape when he was treated properly as a human. When he was a slave, he did not even have time and will to think about it.
(Page 17) âI have no accurate age knowledge, never having seen any authentic record containing it. By far, the larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant. I do not remember to have ever met a slave who could tell of his birthday. They seldom come nearer to it than planting time, harvest-time, cherry-time, spring-time, or fall-time. A want of information concerning my own was a source of unhappiness even during childhood. The white children could tell their ages. I could not tell why I ought to be deprived of the same privilege. I was not allowed to make any inquiries of my master concerning it. He deemed all such inquiries on the part of a slave improper and impertinent and evidence of a restless spirit.â
This is a means of mental enslavement. By not telling slaves the date of their birth, slave owners dehumanize them to control them more easily. Douglass notes the difference between slaves and white people (that white people know their birthdates). This shows how slaves are treated as subhuman â they donât even have a right to know their age.
Mental enslavement is one of the core themes of the book. The simile with a horse gives the idea that not knowing your age makes you feel like a horse, which is used only like a workforce but nothing more.
âIt is better than a dozen slaves should suffer under the lash, than that the overseer should be convicted, in the presence of the slaves, of having been at fault.â (p. 34)
If slaves were not allowed to explain themselves because he didn't want to waste his time, and if he needed to explain, the slaves might not agree with their logic (Mr Goreâs true evaluation of slavery would be about using slaves as utility and cheap labour, which contradicts with the idea of slavery according to black people). Therefore it is easier not to explain. If Mr Gore allowed one slave to explain their actions, he would need to allow the other slaves also to reason and explain. It would make the slaves âunmanageableâ and âuncontrollable.â
Mr Gore did not believe that a slave could correct the judgement of that of a master and therefore paid no mind to the âexcusesâ and explanations that said slaves made. This makes sense to me as taking one's voice away (metaphorically) essentially removes a major component that makes us humans; this helped further strike fear into the hearts of slaves and extinguished any thoughts that would go against that of the masters.
He has to admit that he is never wrong. So if a slave can win the argument, it makes him more like a human. They take their voice away to make it easier to control the slaves.
"Since he lacks family and has little sense of a home, he goes to Baltimore without thinking about it twice. Although he isn't free per se, he still has this sense that his master will be more friendly and with better conditions than his last plantation. "I will never forget the ecstasy with which I received the intelligence that my old master (Anthony) had determined to let me go to Baltimore to live with Mr Auld, brother to my old master's son-in-law, Captain Thomas Auld. (Pg. 40)
"I will never forget the ecstasy with which I received the intelligence that my old master (Anthony) had determined to let me go to Baltimore, to live with Mr Auld, brother to my old master's son-in-law, Captain Thomas Auld. (p. 40)."
Even though this news was quite different to the normal news that he received, this still made him very happy.
He says that the worst that can happen is that they will treat him the way he was treated on the plantation. So he is looking forward to having a chance to have a better life.
His first name is Frederick, and he never changed it because he thought of it as his identity. The masters gave the last names because they did not want to give them their true culture.
It symbolizes a new start, and the text focuses on how he is scrubbing his dead skin to show how he is becoming a new version of himself, like how a snake sheds its skin and gets a new one leaving all the negativity from Lloyd's plantation in the past. For him, washing is him purifying himself from a place where (p. 40/41)
Baltimore seems to be a place of promise because the hardship he would suffer there can't be worse than what he suffered till now, so It can only be better.
He is transforming into a better version of himself, like a snake.
Douglass learnt that there was something hidden in writing that the white man did not want the slave to know. Auld said, "give a slave an inch; he will take an ell." As Douglass started to learn how to read and Mr Auld prohibited Mrs Auld from continuing to teach him, he realized how true this statement was. Douglass received an inch, and now he wanted the whole ell. He wanted to learn how to read well and even write. Auld explained how it was in the slave's best interest not to learn how to read because it would cause him much harm. They should obey their masters. If not, they'll become of no value and unmanageable. Douglass realized more and more as he learnt to read the truth of Mr Auld's statement and started to contemplate if reading was a blessing or a curse.
Mr Auld's answer to learning Frederick Douglass to read gave the slave a clear understanding of mental enslavement.
Over time she picked up her husbandâs habits and became even more violent. She got used to the slave and started to act with Frederick Douglass like a slave, while at the beginning, she had never had a slave before, and she was treating him as a human. (p. 48-49)
The reason why she was nice to Douglass initially was that she had never had a slave before. Throughout that time, her husband started to teach her how to treat the slaves.
Slavery dehumanizes both slaves and their masters.
âThe moral I gained from the dialogue was the power of truth over the conscience of even a slaveholder. What I got from Sheridan was a bold denunciation of slavery and a powerful vindication of human rights.â (p. 51)
Giving form to the thoughts is important to remember them. He felt something was wrong with him, and the book helped them solidify his thoughts.
The older he gets, the more he reflects on these thoughts and thinks of how he will spend the rest of his life, which was one of the most significant reasons for him to escape.
His old masters died, and as a part of his âpropertyâ, was inherited by Mrs Lucretia or Master Andrew. (p. 55-56)
After his death, all his property was collected and split among the songs and daughters. Including the slaves as a part of âitems.â
The book is quite compact, so everything included has something related to the issue of slavery.
She served his old master her entire life, but after her masterâs death, she ended up under the new master's control. Her new owner did not find her useful and sent her into the woods to live alone(p. 57-58)
They built her a little hut and then just put her there. She could not take care of herself, so she would starve to death. This was one of the key points for Douglass to understand that he was either dying young or serving till the last minute of her life.
Adopted slaveholders were not used to holding slaves. As a result, their method of covering lack of firmness with extreme cruelty did not work, and none of the slaves even called them âmasterâ (p. 62-63)
Because she fell into the fire in her childhood, she could barely do something and be helpful as a slave. She was âto master a bill of expenseâ and âconstant offence to himâ, so she was consistently wiped (p. 65)
The slaves were used as utilities. So Henny, who could not use her to do labour, was irritated and finally gave her freedom because she could not do anything.
Other slaveholders sent âunmanageableâ slaves to Covey. He was extremely cruel and fearful, creating an atmosphere of surveillance. Covey was returning slaves after they were trained and docile enough.
Covey was a poor man who could not afford slaves, so he landed the slaves to train them and mentally break them. He knew how to do all the farming himself. Thatâs how he could check all the lies about the work and how long it would take to do something. The fact that he was working with slaves sometimes made him more respectable among the slaves.
Covey was too poor to buy slaves. So he bought a 20-year-old Caroline as a âbreederâ to have more slaves. (p. 70-71)
There were 2 ways to make more slaves: breading and renting slaves from other slaveholders.
A person who trains the slaves to be docile.
Coveyâs job was to break slaves to make them manageable mentally. So he had to do everything to threaten the slaves to the extent that the slaves were scared of escaping because the punishment would be too cruel.
It was more efficient to keep the slaves uneducated rather than have their intellectual developed because this way, is easier to maintain slavery (p. 84)
At the same time, the language played an important role because his narratives were about how he fought for freedom.
His old master died, so to escape Covey, he escapes to Baltimore and works in the shipyard.
He expected the North to be poor because they did not have slaves. However, it turned out to be the opposite, which caused a lot of questions about slavery in Douglassâs head. Also, the northerners thought slaves were happy on plantations because they were singing âhappyâ songs.
The north broke the idea that there is no prosperity without slavery.
(Page 45):
Douglass learned that his key to freedom was learning what he was told not to learn. He understood that by learning how one reads and writes, he would be able to fight back against the slavery he was put under. He also learned that Auld knew his sinister orientation and actions as horrible and despicable acts but decided to live with it for whatever reason. He learned that Auld knew he was a bad person.
"if you teach that n***** (speaking of myself) how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would become unmanageable and of no value to his master. As to himself, it could do him no good but a great deal of harm. It would make him discontented and unhappy.â These words sank deep into my heart, stirred up sentiments within that lay slumbering, and called into existence an entirely new train of thought. It was a new and special revelation, explaining dark and mysterious things with which my youthful understanding had struggled, but in vain. I now understood the most perplexing difficultyâthe white manâs power to enslave the black man. It was a grand achievement, and I prized it highly. From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom."
He figured out that lack of knowledge and mental enslavement is the base of slavery, which makes the slaves work. âMental enslavement businessâ
(Page 52): Douglass had often heard the word but never known what it meant. He would hear others speaking of it when talking about when a slave had "run away and succeeded in getting clear, or if a slave killed his master, set fire to a barn, or did anything wrong in the mind of a slaveholder, it was spoken of as the fruit of abolition." This clearly shows how most people from the south felt towards the abolition of slavery. He eventually discovered the meaning of the word when it appeared in the city papers, along with petitions from the north "praying for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia".
After finding out what the word meant, Douglass writes that "the light broke in upon me by degrees." To him, this was an astounding revelation.
When Douglass first heard the word, he understood that it was necessary. It is an idea that wording the movement was significant for understanding and making it more concrete. The language was why he got familiar with abolition because he had just heard the word.
The shift to present tense is used to make the audience feel emotions to involve more feelings and to allow the readers to feel the way he and many other slaves felt. Frederick uses his language skills to empathize with how the grandmother now suffers after she served and raised her master and his family her whole life. He wants to make his audience feel how it feels to realize having one of the only family members left suffering to death while you cannot help. While the uncertainty of if she is still alive.
(Pages 57-58) If any one thing in my experience, more than another, served to deepen my conviction of the infernal character of slavery and to fill me with unutterable loathing of slaveholders, it was their base ingratitude to my poor old grandmother. She had served my old master faithfully from youth to old age. She had been the source of all his wealth; she had peopled his plantation with slaves; she had become a great-grandmother in his service. She had rocked him in infancy, attended him in childhood, served him through life, and at his death, wiped from his icy brow the cold death sweat and closed his eyes forever. She has nevertheless left a slave--a slave for life--a slave in the hands of strangers, and in their hands, she saw her children, her grandchildren, and her great-grandchildren divided, like so many sheep, without being gratified with the small privilege of a single word, as to their or her destiny. And, to cap the climax of their base ingratitude and fiendish barbarity, my grandmother, who was now very old, having outlived my old master and all his children, having seen the beginning and end of all of them, and her present owners finding she was off. Still, with little value, her frame was already racked with old-age pains. Complete helplessness fast stealing over her once active limbs, they took her to the woods, built her a little hut, put up a little mud-chimney, and then made her welcome to the privilege of supporting herself there in perfect loneliness, thus virtually turning her out to die! If my poor old grandmother now lives, she lives to suffer in utter loneliness; she lives to remember and mourn the loss of children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.
The present tense's purpose is to make it as visual and as close to the reader as possible. He shows the reality that a masterâs âkindnessâ is actual cruelty. He describes the present in all the other cases of using the present tense.
Frederick Douglass left Baltimore to work for Master Thomas after 9 months, âduring which time he had given me several severe whippings, all to no good purposeâ. His master considered that city life had a pernicious effect upon him because he had an easy life and was not treated with the discipline âneededâ. âMy master and I had quite several differences. He found me unsuitable for his purpose. My city life, he said, had had a very pernicious effect upon me. It had almost ruined me for every good purpose and fitted me for everything bad." Page 65
Getting more freedom makes him think of freedom even more. Here, he was treated better, and the effect of mental enslavement significantly decreased. He uses âperniciousâ in a sarcastic way.
The turning point of Douglass's career is the battle with Mr Covey, where he realizes his worth of freedom and realises his worth as a human being. His battle with Mr Covey helped free him from mental chains, and he started thinking of freedom again.
âIt rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a sense of my manhood. It recalled the departed self-confidence, and inspired me again with a determination to be free.â (p. 78)
Afterwards, he says that if any white man wants to whip him, he has to kill Douglass first. And Covey does not do anything about the situation because he cannot overtake Douglass with power, so he pretends nothing happened.
The main idea of the holiday was not to rest and recover from hard work but to entertain their masters. Slaveholders were too selfish to provide the slaves with free time, so they abused them for their benefit and entertainment. For instance, they would make drinking bets on which slaves would get drunk faster (poison them on purpose), which left most of the slaves during the holiday intoxicated. Then, when the holidays finished, the slaveholders made the slaves believe as if they were coming back to freedom from the arms of slavery.
âMost of us used to drink it down, and the result was just what might be supposed: many of us were led to think that there was little to choose between liberty and slaveryâ (p. 80)
The point of Christmas was to show slaves that they could not handle the freedom in case it was given. Frederick Douglass liked to compare their opinion and what the slaves were told.
His saying on the beating does not have any validity because slaves didnât have a valid argument. None of the white workers wanted to defend Douglass because Frederickâs testimonial wasnât valid, and they feared that they would have to face the consequences for defending a slave by the other men in the shipyard. (p. 96-97)
If you were an abolitionist, your life was in danger.
Slaves were not counted as people, so there was no point in listening to the item.
A thoughtless slave who cannot reason or evaluate the morals of the white man. Therefore being ignorant of their circumstances and not realizing they are being dehumanized. Their abuse becomes normalized, and they become more compliant. (p. 98)
The ability to think rationally separates humans and animals.
Chapter 10 is the longest because it is an important part of the story. He spent the last 4 years as a slave comfortably with Mr Freeland without getting whipped; he even convinced and started teaching other slaves how to read and write. He tried to escape with a couple of other fellow slaves, but a slave turned his back on them and told the master about their escape plan. This shows the desire for freedom from the slaves after being educated.
Chapter 10 describes his way to escape and his description of who is a slave.
Defending and standing up for slaves was not a smart idea because helping slaves caused them to be prosecuted, as Frederick states on page 100. The people who helped were punished hard, so many would not dare to do so, but Frederick applauses those who did even though it rarely ended well for the slaves. Due to them being searched and then heavily punished or killed.
The more information is conveyed in public; the more data masters and slaveholders have, which will help them to prevent all the slave escapes.