It is less common today for readers to have a deep engagement with writing; neuroscience tells us that deep reading affects our minds in ways that are likely to change as our reading habits change.
Is Google Making Us Stupid?
Is Google Making Us Stupid?
Many people prefer to skim shorter passages of text online, and some people wonder if doing so is changing the way we think.
Is Google Making Us Stupid?
I’ve noticed over the past couple years that my attention span for reading is shorter.
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.
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 “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 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).
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).
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.
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.