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.