In addition to sarcasm that is evident here, with Douglass’s reference to the fact that “a very different-looking class of people” has resulted from the sexual assault of enslaved black women by white men, his allusion to the “lineal descendants of Ham” recalls the idea that black people were supposedly condemned to slavery by God. A more biblically-accurate reading of African-American slavery than the one Douglass is mocking would question whether or not bondage indicates that black people are derived from Ham, or if they’re actually derived from Shem, whose descendants–the Israelites–were warned that they’d be transported to slavery on wooden ships if they broke their covenant with the Heavenly Father.
A more-recent of example of what Douglass describes here is evident in the song “Mercy, Mercy Me (The Ecology)” by Marvin Gaye, which features despairing lyrics that overlay whispered prayers about environmental degradation. The sweet melody of the song is juxtaposed with the sadness of the words’ meaning, recreating a form of melancholy that may be reminiscent of the singing Douglass recalls.
In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs characterizes enslaved black peoples’ singing with the words “If you were to hear them at such times, you might think they were happy. But can that hour of singing and shouting sustain them through the dreary week, toiling without wages, under constant dread of the lash?”
Douglass’s reference to black people as the children of Ham wasn’t formerly as peculiar in black texts as it might seem now. In a passage that features other biblical language, like the use of the word “Ethiopian” to characterize any black person, George Schuyler describes a fictional town in Black No More called Happy Hill, Mississippi, in which black people–or “The Sons or Daughters of Ham,” as they are called–are “either hung or shot and then broiled” in order to “lighten the dullness of the place.”
This description of enslaved black peoples’ appetite for fruit and the strategies employed by white people to keep them from taking it is similar to the plot of Charles W. Chesnutt’s story “The Goophered Grapevine.” In that tale, a plantation owner employs a black conjure woman to put a spell on a grapevine so that the people who eat from it die, or experience mysterious illness.
Enslaved black people who claimed they were content might have just been showing white people what they knew they wanted to see. In Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, a duplicitous character named Bledsoe castigates the narrator for taking a white university donor to a poor, black section of a southern town, and says “Why, the dumbest black bastard in the cotton patch knows that the only way to please a white man is to tell him a lie!” If Douglass is describing black people who had the same belief as Ellison’s character, this may explain why white people received reports that confirmed their beliefs about black peoples’ supposed acceptance of slavery.
In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs refers sarcastically to the idea of enslaved peoples’ supposed contentment as she describes the tumult that passed through her town because of Nat Turner’s insurrection. Jacobs suggests that if white people truly believed their slaves were happy, they wouldn’t have been so worried about a revolt.
In light of his description of the manner in which Sophia Auld is corrupted by her role as a slave mistress, one might ask if Douglass’s rhetorical purpose is to reach other black people with his account of slavery or appeal to a white person who might have been able to imagine herself in the place of Sophia. Passages like this one make it seem evident that Douglass is trying to present the horror of slavery not just to those who could relate to captive black people, but also, to those who could relate to the enslavers, and were in a position to abolish the peculiar institution.
Douglass suggests that there was an inverse correlation between his desire to read and his master’s desire for him to remain ignorant, and that his master’s opposition made him even more convinced that reading could be useful to him. While it seems evident that one purpose Douglass had in mind was to use the skill to make progress in the material world, and obtain his freedom, in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs tells the story of a pious, older black man who was willing to assume the risk of learning to read illegally so he could decipher the words of the bible.
These two examples are relevant to the debate surrounding the “Gateway of Death” theory, or the disagreement about whether or not black people sang songs that seemed to be about spiritual matters– but were actually coded references to, and sometimes directions for, escaping from enslavement on earth–or if the references to freedom in black spirituals actually had to do with the freedom they expected to feel when they were released from their lives, into heaven.
As Harriet Jacobs builds the courage to admit to her grandmother that she is pregnant, she sits down “in the shade of a tree.” The symbol of this tree, which is mentioned at the moment when Jacobs considers the consequences of her sexual relationship, parallels imagery from Their Eyes Were Watching God, in which a pear tree is the site of Janie’s sexual awakening. This parallel is strengthened by the fact that the women have similar confrontations with their grandmothers, after encountering the trees. Harriet’s grandmother tears Harriet’s mother’s wedding ring from her finger and says she is a disgrace. Janie’s grandmother, after witnessing her kissing a boy named Johnny Taylor, immediately proposes that she marry a man who is much older than her. When Janie expresses disgust at the prospect, her grandmother slaps her.
Harriet Jacobs describes a man who, upon gaining control of his new wife’s possessions, wastes the money, impregnates one of her slaves twice, separates the black family members from each other and dies after a night of debauchery. With her comment in response to this situation, Jacobs seems to be making an appeal to white readers, much like Douglass did, about the ways in which they were degraded by slavery. She writes “Had it not been for slavery, he would have been a better man, and his wife a happier woman.”
In the play A Raisin in the Sun, a character named Beneatha is nicknamed “Alaiyo,” which means “One For Whom Bread—Food—Is Not Enough.” This is consistent with the idea that Douglass is willing to relinquish food for learning, when he interacts with the young white boys who inadvertently teach him how to read. Also, in African American literature, it is a recurring theme for people to be depicted as having a choice between food and figurative things that give life more meaning. For example, in this passage, even though he’s hungry and exhausted when he’s being pursued by Covey, young Frederick decides to endure his hunger instead of submitting to the degradation of a beating.
When Douglass writes about how the masters tricked people into being “slaves to rum,” he echoes points made by Harriet Jacobs about the lies white people would tell enslaved black people, in order to make them content with slavery. In particular, Jacobs says a slaveholder once told her that a woman she knew who escaped to the North was starving, and so miserable that she’d begged to be taken back to her former master. Jacobs says she visited the woman later, however, and found out that the story was a lie, a device used–like alcohol during Christmas–to make black people think slavery was better than freedom.
With regard to the blending of ethnicities that resulted from the sexual assault of black women, during slavery, Harriet Jacobs makes a similar statement in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, writing “Who can measure the amount of Anglo-Saxon blood coursing in the veins of American slaves?” Furthermore, Jacobs makes this point to counter the idea that black people were condemned to slavery by God. As Douglass mentioned, American enslavement was supposedly evidence of the fact that black people are the cursed descendants of Noah’s son, Ham. Some argue instead that black peoples’ enslavement is evidence of the fact that they are descended from one of Noah’s other sons, Shem.
Douglass personifies the trickster in this instance, daring the other boys to do something that will be advantageous to him. This is similar to the tar baby tale, from the Uncle Remus stories, in which a rabbit that is stuck in tar, and therefore susceptible to the fox, suggests that the last thing he wants is to be thrown into a thorn bush. In fact, the rabbit feels at home in the thorns and uses them to escape, when the fox throws him into them.
Their Eyes Were Watching God begins with the words “Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.” This passage gives us a sense of an enslaved person’s most fervent wish; to be as free as the boats they see far off in the water.
Jacobs’ desire to see her children dead instead of having them controlled by her enslaver seems similar to what motivated Margaret Garner, the woman who inspired the plot of Toni Morrison’s Beloved, to murder her own daughter instead of seeing her return to slavery. This sentiment is repeated a couple paragraphs later when Dr. Flint throws Jacobs’ son across the room. For a moment, she thinks her son is dead, but when he does open his eyes, she writes, “I don’t know whether I was very happy.”
Of the introductory letters that begin on this page, Robert Stepto writes “In theory, each of these introductory documents should be classic guarantees written almost exclusively for a white reading public, concerned primarily and ritualistically with the white validation of a newfound black voice, and removed from the tale in such ways that the guarantee and tale vie silently and surreptitiously for control of the narrative as a whole.” (17) Even though these letters are contained within the same book, there is potential for them to compete with Douglass’s text for authorial control.
Of Garrison, Stepto writes, “His ‘Preface’ ends, not with a reference to Douglass or his tale, but with an apostrophe very much like one he would use to exhort and arouse an antislavery assembly. With the following cry Garrison hardly guarantees Douglass’s tale, but enters and reenacts his own abolitionist career instead.” (18)
Stepto notes that in light of the tension that developed between Douglass and Garrison in later years, one might be inclined to perceive a battle for authorial control between Douglass’s narrative and this prefatory letter. Yet, with reference to the passage that begins “This Narrative contains many affecting incidents,” Stepto asserts that Garrison “acknowledges the tale’s singular rhetorical power” and “remains a member of Douglass’s audience far more than he assumes the posture of a competing or superior voice” (19).
Robert Stepto maintains that because Wendell Phillips writes to Douglass as a friend, his act “implies a moral and linguistic parity between a white guarantor and black author which we haven’t seen before” (19).
Of the sentence that begins “My feet have been so cracked,” Robert Stepto writes “The pen, symbolizing the quest for literacy fulfilled, actually measures the wounds of the past, and this measuring process becomes a metaphor in and of itself for the artful composition of travail transcended” (20).
With regard to this homophones “Freeland” and “free land,” Robert Stepto says “Douglass seems to fashion these passages for both his readership and himself” (20). This suggests that if the original purpose for black writers was to prove their humanity to white people, Douglass transcends this goal, writing for his own purposes instead of just to confront the preconceptions of a skeptical white audience.
Robert Stepto writes that the internal rhyming of “‘saddened’ and ‘gladdened'” “is persuasive because it is pleasant, and because it offers the illusion of a reasoned conclusion” (21).
In response to the sentence that begins “My long-crushed spirit rose,” Stepto writes that effusive writing linked “certain slave narratives with the popular sentimental literary forms of the nineteenth century,” but that “Douglass’s passages of introspective analysis create fresh space for themselves in the American literary canon” (22).
Robert Stepto contrasts Douglass’s discussion of the sorrow songs with that of Solomon Northup. Stepto writes that while the “demands of audience and authentication” meant that Northup expressed little camaraderie with other enslaved people, Douglass’s initial characterization of the songs as “unmeaning jargon” gives way to his eventual ability to hear them differently. (22-23) Hence, Stepto suggests that Northup’s desire to make a particular impression on his white audience resulted in his characterization of himself as alienated from the people who sang black spirituals. Furthermore, Stepto’s reference to “authentication” suggests that he believed Northup thought any expression of kinship with the singers would make it harder for white readers to believe that he wrote his own tale, as if no one who was capable of writing could find anything of value in the sorrow songs.
Stepto writes about how impressive it is that Douglass apparently reproduces this pass from memory and calls it “a veritable roadsign on his path to freedom and liberty” (23-24). The pass is also a rather literal example of the idea that black people had to master written language in order to be acknowledged as people. In The Signifying Monkey, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. writes about the narrative of a formerly-enslaved man named James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw who watches a white man who is reading and believes the book talks to the man, telling him secrets that he then speaks aloud. Yet, when Gronnosaw stands before the book, it “says” nothing to him. In summary of the idea that the book responds to Gronniosaw’s black face with silence, Gates writes “The silent book did not reflect or acknowledge the black presence before it” (149). Because of this snub, Gates indicates that “some forty-five years later Gronniosaw writes a text that speaks his face into existence among the authors and texts of the Western tradition” (150). In light of the trope of the Talking Book and the fact that white acceptance of the idea of black peoples’ humanity was contingent upon evidence of black literacy, Douglass’s writing of a pass that could make him free is a symbolic example of a black person writing himself into human existence.
About this final passage, Stepto writes, “having traveled with Douglass through his account of his life, we arrive in Nantucket in 1841 to hear him speak. We become, along with Mr. Garrison, his audience” (25). Stepto asserts that this last rhetorical move supplants Garrison, reasserting Douglass’s control of his own story.
In light of the fact that Douglass ends his narrative by introducing a poem written by a white minister, Stepto writes, “The tables are clearly reversed: Douglass has not only controlled his personal history, but also” provided authentication for “what is conventionally a white Northerner’s validating text” (26). Lucinda H. MacKethan offers support for Stepto’s point with her own characterization, writing “Here the American slave appropriates the function and strategies of his white guarantor, authenticating the truth and the tone of a poem written by a “northern Methodist preacher” which he then inserts into the text.” Douglass supplants the white people who vouched for him before the start of his narrative by vouching for a white person at the end of his narrative. In both form and content, this literary reversal is a good example of the chiasmus that Henry Louis Gates, Jr. writes about, the “reversal of the master’s attempt to transform a human being into a commodity” (140).
With regard to Douglass’s first autobiography, Winifred Morgan writes, the “first paragraph of his Narrative notes that he had never seen ‘any authentic record’ (47) of his birth.” This is relevant to the idea that literacy and the ability to manipulate written words has historically been regarded as proof of a black person’s humanity. The absence of a written record of Douglass’s birth symbolizes the fact that until he wrote his own record of his life–writing himself into existence–his race kept him from being regarded as a human being.
Winifred Morgan writes “In fact, by contravening Auld’s insistence that he live out his existence as a thoughtlessly contented slave, by making every effort to achieve literacy, and finally by becoming quite unmanageable, Douglass showed how well he understood Auld’s dictates” (78). Morgan says this connects to Auld’s “inadvertent lesson,” that “there would be no keeping” the slave who learned to read.
Winifred Morgan writes “As the youthful Douglass realizes when he reads, rereads, and mulls over his copy of The Columbian Orator, the American rhetorical tradition speaks in terms of universal freedom and the rights of all men” (79). Because the passage involves a black man who persuades a white man to emancipate him from slavery, it also emphasizes the connection between writing and speaking, or rhetoric, and a black person’s ability to persuade someone that they’re worthy of human rights.
As she makes the point that many slave narratives written by men emphasized individuality, as opposed to community, Winifred Morgan refers to this fight, writing, “In the Narrative Douglass appears single-handedly to have beaten Covey to a standstill. (Douglass’s second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom, reveals that Caroline, a strong slave woman, could have tipped the balance in his opponent’s favor; however, she chose to stay out of the fight and was later punished for not helping Covey.)” (80). With this observation, Morgan suggests that Douglass benefitted more from the support of those in his community than he indicated, even if this support wasn’t direct and active.
Morgan discusses the secret testimony that results in the discovery of their escape plan as an example of the experiences that undermine Douglass’s feeling of community with others, writing, “Douglass’s first attempt to flee North with two other slaves by using the passes he has written almost ends in disaster because someone, presumably another slave, has warned the owners. The Narrative thus gives the impression that neither slaves nor whites can be trusted” (80). While this is true, Morgan’s more general conclusion that Douglass “and the other slaves in the Narrative live isolated and mistrustful lives” seems to be at odds with the description of camaraderie between him and the men he tries to escape with. Douglass writes “The fact was, we cared but little where we went, so we went together. Our greatest concern was about separation. We dreaded that more than any thing this side of death.”
With reference to the dearth of information about his wife and other women in this narrative, Winifred Morgan writes “The black women in Douglass’s narrative are by nature subordinate to the men. They serve as examples of victimization, such as his aunt, or as shadowy helpmates, such as the free woman he marries” (82).
Winifred Morgan writes “Jacobs’s most important relationship, of course, is with her children, and this keeps her in place when she might otherwise have fled or even committed suicide” (87). In keeping with her point that Douglass’s narrative emphasizes self-reliance and the power associated with literacy, as opposed to community, it’s relevant to consider the fact that when Douglass mentions the prospect of suicide, the thing that saves him is not necessarily the thought of other people, but “the hope of being free.” He feeds this hope by reading, trying to use the dictionary to understand what the word “abolition” means.
In Witnessing Slavery, Frances Smith Foster writes “Moses Grandy attributed the lack of permanent recognition of a slave’s birth to the attitude of the master who considers slaves as chattel and to the denial to slaves of the information with which they could calculate the anniversaries of their existence.”
With regard to the Columbian Orator, Frances Smith Foster indicates that Douglass’s study of this text influenced his development and informed his experience as a public speaker so that “When he wrote his narrative, it was heavily influenced by his training in rhetoric” (56).
In an article entitled “From Fugitive Slave to Man of Letters: The Conversion of Frederick Douglass,” Lucinda H. MacKethan writes “For the slave, however, ‘entitling’ signified a central paradox; one had to know one’s letters in order to be free, but in America, one had to be free in order to learn one’s letters. In this double bind the fugitive slave found the greatest challenge to his achievement of full human status” (56). MacKethan says this reality was emphasized for Douglass when Hugh Auld warned his wife about teaching him to read. Furthermore, the “entitling” MacKethan describes is a former slave’s process of selecting letters to represent themselves as a free person. Hence, the paradox she refers to also relates to the fact that one had to know how to read in order to assert their humanity and give themselves a free name, but one usually had to be free already in order to learn how to read.
MacKethan describes Douglass’s narrative within the context of spiritual autobiographies, suggesting that his feeling that he was “chosen” resonates theologically, and forms an association between spirituality and literacy. Commenting about Douglass’s observation that he was selected from a group in which “There were those younger, those older, and those of the same age,” McKethan writes “What he was chosen for is made quite clear in Chapters Six and Seven, which form the center of the Narrative and deal exclusively with Douglass’s personal discovery of the power of words” (59).
MacKethan suggests that Douglass emphasizes the power of words by juxtaposing his description of acts of violence with the aggressive use of words. She writes “What he takes particular care to note is a use of physical force almost always accompanied by a manipulative language strategy. The overseer Mr. Severe, for instance, was not only a ‘cruel’ man but a ‘profane swearer’ who used words in the same manner and to the same effect that he used his whip” (59).
Lucinda MacKethan asserts that Douglass moves from the discussion of the overseers’ swearing to the “unmeaning jargon” of the sorrow songs to indicate “their powerlessness in relation to the power residing in the profanity of overseers” (59-60).
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.”
In keeping with Lucinda MacKethan’s assertion that Douglass’s autobiography has religious overtones, it’s worth noting that the “hungry white street urchins” who Douglass bribed “with bread” were enacting a chiasmatic reversal of scripture. Matthew 4:4 reads “But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” While Douglass is willing to relinquish bread for words, or for the ability to wield words, the boys he learns from inadvertently offer him ability with words, in exchange for bread. Furthermore, MacKethan characterizes this scene as a “‘first communion’ experience complete with consecrated bread” (61).
Lucinda MacKethan indicates that it’s relevant that Douglass receives The Columbia Orator at the age of 12 because Protestant children often begin the confirmation process at this time in their lives. She writes, “Douglass shows himself, then, at the ‘perfect’ age for receiving, as if by divine intervention, his own sacred text” (61).
Comparing Douglass’s autobiography to Jonathan Edwards’ Personal Narrative, MacKethan relates the misery Douglass experiences, after literacy gives him new perspective about his condition, to Edwards’ self-loathing after growing spiritual awareness makes him more conscious of his shortcomings. (61-62)
MacKethan writes “Mastering letters enabled Douglass to write his ‘pass’ and to ‘pass’ into a world where he could no longer be named a slave” (64). Her use of antanaclasis here, or a homonymic pun, aligns MacKethan’s writing with the African American literary tradition, at least according to the criteria Henry Louis Gates, Jr. established in The Signifying Monkey. Hence, Lucinda MacKethan not only writes about the black literary tradition, she also participates in it as she writes about it.
In keeping with her religious reading of the text, Lucinda MacKethan compares the prospect of Henry eating his pass to “the Holy Communion” rite of eating “the word” (66). This corresponds to her theory that Douglass’s transformation from an illiterate slave to a word-wielding free man parallels religious tales of conversion.
Commenting on Robert Stepto’s opinion that Douglass’s omission of the details surrounding his escape serves to authenticate his tale, Lucinda MacKethan asserts that this omission also gives the narrative greater religious significance. (As MacKethan notes, Stepto’s comments to this effect appear on p. 25 of From Behind the Veil). MacKethan writes “Although this is a perceptive interpretation of Douglass’s intentions, we might also infer that, in terms of the organizing principles of the conversion narrative paradigm, the actual physical removal would not have the inner spiritual significance of certain other events” (66).
In his biography of Douglass, William McFeely says a historian named Dickson Preston determined “from an inventory of his master’s slaves the time of Frederick’s birth–February 1818 (a year later than the date that Douglass himself calculated)” (8).
McFeely suggests that Douglass’s speculation about the race of his father was probably founded on gossip he heard in his grandmother’s cabin, “as people accounted for his difference in color from his brothers and sisters.” This talk related to the fact that Douglass was “‘yellow,'” and that he “had a muted, dull complexion” that was lighter than those of his relatives. (8)
Although William McFeely says Douglass “placed the blame squarely on slavery” for the fact that he wasn’t close to his mother (6), the historian also cites a reason for Douglass to resent her. McFeely writes, “To be sure, even frequent visits would have been a poor substitute for the constancy of a daily life together, but Harriet did not make them at all” (7).
The scenario described, in which a master would feel “compelled” to send his own child away “out of deference to the feelings of his…wife” echoes the story of Abraham and his wife Sarah. In Genesis 21, Sarah sends her handmaid, Hagar, away when she is mocked by the son Hagar bears for Abraham. Likewise, a master might have been compelled to send his child away if a slave mistress felt like the child of her husband and an enslaved black woman made a mockery of her marriage.
Douglass lived on the plantation of a man named Edward Lloyd, a successful farmer and planter who served as both governor of Maryland and a senator. In his biography of Douglass, William McFeely writes “Douglass never explicitly said whom he most suspected to have been his father, but late in life he was still intrigued by the story of a slave son of Edward Lloyd’s who was bitterly resented by a half brother whom he clearly resembled.” McFeely also noted that during moments of passion in the midst of a speech, Douglass had been known to allege that Lloyd was his father. (13-14) This prospect corresponds with Douglass’s comment about “the double relation of master and father.”
In his biography of Douglass, William McFeely indicates that the man referred to as “Captain Anthony” is Aaron Anthony, who was “hired to be [Lloyd’s] chief lieutenant” and ranked just above the overseers in the plantation hierarchy. (14)
Immediately prior to his own quotation from this scene in the autobiography, William McFeely writes “Frederick Douglass was too young when he lived at Wye House to generalize as he would later about the nature of the slave system, but he was precisely the right age for individual acts of physical brutality to become indelibly recorded in his memory.” McFeely contends that the whip was typically used not to promote work but, instead, as a means for white people to express emotions like “anger, frustration” and “jealousy” (17).
McFeely writes that even though the Lloyd family had made its fortune on tobacco, the plantation–which was “self-sufficient” and a “complex economic entity”–was abandoning the crop for wheat when Frederick came to live at its main house, in about 1824. (14-15)
In keeping with Douglass’s account of the bare necessities that were provided for enslaved people, McFeely suggests that comforts were withheld intentionally to make black people work harder, writing “food and clothing were kept sparse” because “those who have little work to survive” (15).
This quote about an “obdurate heart” is from a poem by William Cowper called “The Task.” Cowper goes on to say that “The natural bond/of brotherhood is severed” when a person “finds his fellow guilty of a skin/not coloured like his own.” In addition to being known for writing hymns, Cowper is known for writing in support of the abolitionist movement.
In response to these first lines, William L. Andrews writes “Here Jacobs seems acutely aware of a paradox informing her situation as an ex-slave autobiographer: the refusal to tell all the truth would be the most effective way for her to parry the charge of not telling the truth.” These lines appear in an article entitled “The Novelization of Voice in Early African American Narrative.”
This reference to the wariness of a black person “when speaking to an untried man” is echoed later in the text, in Chapter Seven, when Douglass describes his interaction with two Irish men who advise him to run away. Douglass pretends he doesn’t understand what the men are saying. Because he doesn’t know who they are and he thinks there’s a chance that they “might be treacherous,” he guards against the prospect that they could encourage him to run just so they’re able to catch him and exploit him. Similarly, Douglass characterizes himself and other enslaved black people as hesitant to be forthright with a white person who asked how they were treated by a master, because there was always a chance that their words could be used against them.
Hugh Auld’s words connect Douglass’s tale to a fictional instance of human trafficking. In Ken Liu’s story “The Paper Menagerie,” a Chinese woman tells the story of being smuggled into Hong Kong and “adopted” against her will by a family that made her a servant for their children, beat her regularly and locked her in a cupboard at night. The woman says she was beaten if she tried to learn English, and that the man who made her a captive said “‘Why do you want to learn English…You want to go to the police?'” Much like Hugh Auld understands that Douglass could use his literacy to escape, the man who has virtually enslaved this Chinese woman understands that she will be better-prepared to get away if she learns to use words in a new way.
The story of the Chinese woman also provides a link between Douglass’s narrative and that of Harriet Jacobs. The woman recalls that an older woman pulled her aside and warned her that she could be sexually assaulted in the home where she was being held captive. The older woman said “‘One day, the man who owns you will get drunk, and he’ll look at you and pull you to him and you can’t stop him. The wife will find out, and then you will think you really have gone to hell'” (191). The prospect of sexual assault by one’s “owner” and resentment from the wife of the assaulter associates Liu’s tale with the testimony of Jacobs, who was pursued by her enslaver for several years and harassed by his jealous wife.
William McFeely associates Sandy’s decision to abandon the escape plan with superstition. He writes “Sandy Jenkins, however, was not free of the superstitious power of a misread Bible, a well-rubbed root, or a dream” (52). McFeely then goes on to discuss a dream that Sandy apparently regarded as a warning that Douglass should be cautious.
In his discussion of what he characterizes as Douglass’s complicated relationship with the Aulds, William McFeely writes “By separating the boy from his relatives, the two had unwittingly seen to it that he had no family ties strong enough to keep him from trying to escape from slavery” (39). This relates to remarks Douglass makes early on in his narrative about “The ties that ordinarily bind children to their homes” being suspended for him, and the fact that the absence of his mother and the distance from his grandmother kept him from feeling close to his brother and sisters. McFeely’s observation contrasts Douglass’s experience with that of Harriet Jacobs, about whom Winifred Morgan wrote “Jacobs fears that if she runs away, the Flints, as retribution, would sell her children; yet she takes a chance on breaking the cycle of slavery because she fears even more having Ellen grow up and repeat her humiliation” (87). There don’t appear to be as many comparable bonds for Douglass.
Jacobs feeling that it would be better for her child to die than to continue living in slavery offers a parallel between Jacobs, Margaret Garner and Morrison’s Beloved. Furthermore, Jacobs’ reference to being “broken in,” or the idea of a mother being forced to observe the abuse of her children so regularly that she eventually accepts it, offers insight into something Frederick Douglass wrote. As he describes the first place where he lived, Douglass indicates that there was little to hold him there because his familial connections were disrupted by the business of slavery. Of his siblings, he writes, “the early separation of us from our mother had well nigh blotted the fact of our relationship from our memories.” Much like the daily experience of slavery results in Jacobs observation of mothers who’ve been traumatized to the point that they express little, as they watch their children being beaten, disruption of families during slavery severed the basic ties between relatives, resulting in situations like the one Douglass described.
In “The Story of O.J.,” Jay-Z raps, “Please don’t die over the neighborhood that your mama rentin.'” This highlights the irony of the fact that black people are currently willing to kill each other over territory that’s owned by white people, much like enslaved black people fought about who had the best master, as Douglass notes.
Douglass’s reading lessons are supported by his observation of how the pieces of a ship are labelled. If we consider the role that sea vessels played with regard to bringing black people to captivity in the New World–the start of their slavery–it’s worth noting that the ships referenced here are relevant to the end of Douglass’s slavery, which is intertwined with his learning to read.
The idea of being ranked amongst animals brings to mind the Great Chain of Being, or the notion that all sentient beings–and, indeed, all substances on earth–are part of a hierarchy that spans from basic minerals, at the bottom, to God, who is at the top. While normally people would be situated above animals in this scheme, however, Douglass notes that he and the other enslaved black people are “ranked with horses, sheep and swine.” In the article “‘The Great Chain of Being Come Undone’ Linking Blackness and Animal Studies,” Calista McRae discusses several studies that address the overlap between depictions of blackness and depictions of animality.
The excerpt here is from a poem entitled “The Farewell Of a Virginia Slave Mother to her daughters, sold into Southern Bondage.” It was written by John Greenleaf Whittier and published in 1843.
The bible verse alluded to at the bottom of this page is Luke 12:47. Ironically, the two verses that proceed it read:
But and if that servant say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming; and shall begin to beat the menservants and maidens, and to eat and drink, and to be drunken;
The lord of that servant will come in a day when he looketh not for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in sunder, and will appoint him his portion with the unbelievers.
So even though Captain Auld referenced this passage to justify his treatment of black people, the chapter could be said to convict him, a purported servant of God who will be punished by his “lord” for beating other servants.
This reference to “a thief in the night” alludes to Christ’s coming, in keeping with 2 Peter 3:10 and 1 Thessalonians 5:2, but Douglass’s description of Covey’s snake-like cunning is more consistent with a description of Satan.
This description of a broken spirit and an intellect that languished under the crushing weight of work recalls Black Like Me, the account of a white man, John Howard Griffin, who changed his physical appearance so he could experience blackness in the American South. In this account, Griffin writes that his “face had lost animation” after several weeks and that his mind dozed “empty for long periods” (p. 117; New American Library edition).
If we accept this testimony, we’re acknowledging that it’s possible to create in any person the mental conditions that supposedly justified enslavement of black people. In other words, while in the past it was a common belief that slavery was justified by black peoples’ mindlessness, Griffin’s account suggests that any supposed blankness of mind resulted from slavery, as opposed to being present in black people before they were enslaved.
The words “You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man” comprise a famous example of chiasmus, or an expression that crosses itself–like the Greek letter for X, “Chi”–from which the literary figure derives it’s name. In the same way that the words cross themselves in this kind of statement, chiasmus can also be used to represent a crossing, or a reversal, of power dynamics, according to Henry Louis Gates, Jr. He writes, “Rather, the texts of the slave could only be read as testimony of defilement: the slave’s representation and reversal of the master’s attempt to transform a human being into a commodity, and the slave’s simultaneous verbal witness of the possession of a humanity shared in common with Europeans” (140).
Douglass’s description of himself sounds like the prophet Isaiah’s description of Israel after it has forsaken God. Characterizing the people as if they are a body, Isaiah says:
From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment.
The idea of using excess to make an enslaved person disgusted with the thing they want is paralleled in a short story by Charles Chesnutt called “Dave’s Neckliss.” In this story, a hardworking and honest black man who is wrongfully accused of stealing a ham is forced to wear one around his neck at all times. As a result of this excessive exposure to thing he supposedly craved, his reputation suffers, he struggles in various ways and he eventually loses his mind.
The quotation here is from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, from the soliloquy that begins “To be, or not to be” in scene 1 of Act 3.
This reference to white workers being “thrown out of employment” recalls Black No More, in which a white labor force is manipulated by their employers into being preoccupied with race, so that it’s possible to exploit them. George Schuyler writes “…so long as the ignorant white masses could be kept thinking of the menace of the Negro to Caucasian race purity and political control, they would give little thought to labor organization” (p. 44; Modern Library edition).
In an essay published in 1900 entitled “Lynch Law in America,” Ida B. Wells-Barnett describes lynch law as a form of justice that emerged in light of the exigencies of westward expansion. As white people moved further away from settlement and civilization on the eastern seaboard, they established an ad hoc method of dealing with criminality. Suspects were tried by a small group of men and hung because there were no courts that would have made it possible for them to receive due process of law. Later though, this process appeared in the south where, as Wells-Barnett puts it, “No emergency called for lynch law.” Despite the fact that there were formal institutions that would have made it possible for people to be tried in a more standard and legitimate manner, lynch law emerged as a way of addressing supposed black criminality. Ironically, in the instance Douglass describes, the law would have been applied to him in a region of the country that had been settled for some time. Despite the fact that there was a fully functioning justice system in Baltimore, Douglass could have easily been at the mercy of a mob that intended to apply it’s own form of law.
Then again, a conservative might believe the fact that President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize—commendation by an international council before he took office as the leader of a sovereign nation—was an indication that he was in the pocket of the world government. Yet, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s receipt of the award could lead to a similar allegation, which just plays into the trope that black leaders in our country are always being directed by some more-powerful, more-strategic, hidden white person.
Cognitive dissonance.
Opening line
That’s a good one
A few sentences
On TW3 start with “I wonder…” Is there a way to mix up the language? Or make more clear that the repetition is purposeful?
You may get to this
But there are secular / atheist reasons to be pro-life too. The idea that no one should do something to a human (even if the human is a poorly organized collection of cells at the moment) without their consent does not require religion. Or that abortion is a form of eugenics to cull undesirables from the population (i.e. eliminate the poor so you don’t have to deal with them anymore).
And…
You got to the eugenics argument! (I’m going to comment as I go through so apologies if you eventually get to things I comment on). I agree with the rural conservative communities regarding more liberal / urban communities with suspicion and derision. But I would argue it’s a two way street, liberal / urban communities also view rural / conservative communities the same way. We fail to see the good faith arguments in each other.