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.
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 “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.
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.