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.
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).