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.
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.