Frederick Douglas's Concept Of Freedom

Freedom has been the cause of wars, political movements, and centuries of debate. The concept of freedom is simple. Freedom is the right to act, speak, or think without hindrance. In our contemporary society, the right to freedom is so basic and innate we struggle to even fathom life without our basic rights. However, less than 200 years ago slavery was legal in the United States. Slavery is the antithesis to freedom, depriving people of the most basic rights and placing them at the whim of their owners. Frederick Douglas, possibly “the most famous and respected African American in the United States for much of the nineteenth century,” details his life as a slave in America (Douglas, 24). Douglas goes on throughout his autobiography to detail

Douglas starts begins defining freedom with his recounting of his mistress stopping his lessons. “Education and slavery were incompatible with each other” (Douglas, 25). This simple statement highlights the necessity of ignorance in maintaining slavery. Slaves, so long as they remain oblivious of their lacking freedom, will remain slaves. Much akin to Davis Wallace’s “This Is Water” speech, fish are ignorant of the existence of water, likewise slaves are ignorant of their status as possessions. How can someone possible comprehend that their existence lacks freedom and basic rights, if one doesn’t even know of these rights to begin with? It follows then, that as Douglas begins his self-education, he would learn of his disposition in the world. As Douglas so eloquently puts it, “in teaching me the alphabet, had given me the inch, and no precaution could prevent me from taking the ell” (Douglas, 25). This statement presents the idea that the mere realization of one’s position allows one to begin the journey to liberate oneself from their enslavement. Douglas begins his own journey then, taking into his own hands his education, he befriends the local white boys and continues to learn to read. As his knowledge continues to improve, Douglas begins to make plans to escape and make for himself a new life. Thus, it can be drawn from Douglas’s argument that freedom is directly related to one’s awareness of one’s own existence. Through education we free ourselves from being trapped in a loop of inequality and gain the tools necessary to free ourselves from our bindings. The truest mark of this link between freedom and knowledge is demonstrated in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit