Lucinda MacKethan writes “In Chapter Five, Douglass was told to bathe in preparation for his new employment in Baltimore; he responded by scrubbing off not just the ‘mange’ of his past life but almost ‘the skin itself’ in a kind of ironic baptism to make himself worthy of the ‘election’ by white masters that he next infers” (60). MacKethan associates this spiritual preparation with literacy, suggesting that Douglass’s baptism relates to the fact that he has been chosen for a situation that will lead to his literacy, which will result in his “salvation from slavery.”