Frederick Douglass Ignorance

Ellena Beltran

HIS315K - Douglass

More Than a Slave

Retrospectively, Fredrick Douglass origins traces back to Talbot County, Maryland. Like many during his time, Douglass does not know the exact year he was born. This is because most slaves at the time were not allowed to know their age. In his narrative, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Douglass puts up a compelling argument about the dehumanizing aspects of slavery using a language that humanize his nature as well as that of African Americans. Throughout his Narrative, Douglass juxtaposes the dehumanized slaves to their humane owners. In large part, his life was devoted towards abolishing slavery. Not only did Douglass preach about human rights, but he encouraged African

Americans to become educated and have the power to shape their own future. Slaves were lead around like sheep, always being told what to do and what not. The job of a slave owner was not only to work slaves but to break their spirits. This practice of slavery made slaves less than human.
Douglass sets off his narrative through a flashback in which he remembers being unhappy and confused concerning the fact that white children would know their ages, while the laws did not allow slaves to know their ages.

However, Douglass over hears a comment from his master that places his birth at around 1818. Douglass also highlights ignorance as a way that whites used as a tool of slavery. He shows how white slave owners maintained slavery through ignorance. Ignorance ensured that even slaves themselves thought that slavery was indeed a natural occurrence, when actually it was a manmade condition. By perpetuating ignorance, many people thought that slaves were naturally incapable of taking part in civil society. Slaves were kept believing that they were workers for the whites. Douglass narrates how whites used strategies and procedures that dominated blacks throughout their lives. Like Douglass, many slaves ignorance towards basic facts of life was a tool used to dehumanize them. For these reasons, they did not know date of birth or paternity. Forced ignorance perpetuated a lack of natural sense of personal identity. White ensured that slaves could not access basic education in which they would know how to read and write. Reading and writing would empower blacks towards self-sufficiency. According Douglass, literacy would give blacks the power to question whites on why they keep slaves. Additionally, ignorance and illiteracy was a better tool to ensure that the story of

slavery is not written, therefore cannot be told in the coming years.
Douglass makes a compelling comparison that just as whites deprived slaves of knowledge and education, slaves should also seek knowledge and education as tool for freedom. Douglass learns from Hugh Auld that knowledge is a road map to freedom . Auld will not stand to let his wife teach Douglass how to read and write. If a slave is educated, it ruins them, according to Auld. Seeing and reading between the lines allows Douglass to conclude that Auld’s strategy, and by large, whites’ is to deny them education, a weapon that could free blacks. Hence, Douglass embarks on a self-educating journey as a way of freeing himself and also as a tool to free the rest of the slaves. Partly, the author gains freedom through his self-education although he does not have that illusion that knowledge alone secures his freedom. However, he believes that knowledge gives the mind an anticipatory attitude to reject slavery and also helps to acknowledge themselves as human beings and not slaves. Nevertheless, Hugh Auld asserts that education actually hurts slaves. Instead of bringing upon freedom or a situational consciousness, education brings suffering. But the truth remains clear to Douglass; that by receiving education, slaves come to hate their masters, which is a realization that many whites could not come to terms with.
Douglass’s narration returns an interesting twist that slavery is not only damaging on the slaves but also on the slave owners. The narration dehumanizes the consolidated power slave owners force onto their counterparts. The very thought of slavery is irresponsible and immoral to Douglass. To degrade another human being, in return, dehumanizes the slave owner himself.
It is one of the themes that Douglass completes his dehumanization of the slavery and it inhuman face.

He does this by describing the inhuman behaviors of slave owner as perpetuators of slavery. Douglass talks of many slaveholders who have committed rape and adultery resulting in children from female slaves . Indeed bearing children outside marriage has an effect on the slaveholder’s family. In many cases the father is forced to sell or alternatively punish his children for being slaves. On the other hand, the slave owner’s wife becomes cruel and resentful to the child. Others develop a skewed sense of religion to excuse themselves for continued sinning around their own homes. Douglass depicts this skewed sense of religion through Sophia Auld who transform from an idealistic to a ruthless woman . By depicting the consequences of slavery through Sophia Auld, Douglass concludes that slavery is such a dehumanizing act that it should be barred from the face of all

societies.
As the narration reaches its peak, Douglass indulges in a distinction between true Christianity and false one. The narration argues that false Christianity belongs to the land while true Christianity belongs to Christ. He points out that slave owner’s Christianity does not meet any threshold of an innate goodness. Such Christianity is hypocritical meant to serve the interests of self-conscious brutality . Douglass comes up with a distinction that the two institutions differ from each other, while on one hand true Christianity is peaceful and charitable; slavery is characterized by brutality and immorality. Thomas Auld comes out as a true illustration of false Christianity. Similarly, Sophia Auld is depicted as a very cruel slave holder who transform from idealistic woman to a cruel person. Interestingly the Thomas’s cruelty increase each time he becomes more of “pious” person . His piety increase his confidence in the God” given right to acquire keep and mistreat slaves. Besides, the Douglass narration show that the Southern church is also very corrupt benefiting from ill obtained money donated by Auld and the rest. The southern church is complicit in being silent on inhuman cruelty of slavery.
Although the entirety of slavery is dehumanizing and cruel, female slaves bore the brute of it all. The vivid description of abuse female characters takes the toll of readers. Henrietta, Henny, Mary, and Aunt Hester suffered at the hands of their slave owners . For most people, the abuses they endured are things from nightmares, things most people could barely fathom as a reality. Douglass describes women whose bodies are mangled and emaciated which elicits pain in the readers. It is a true pointer of the injustices, and cruelty meted out on the female slaves which remained part of their lives for a very long time.
In the narrative, Douglass maintains that slaves are humans being and should be treated like so. Ere However, there exists a sharp discrepancy between slaves and masters who treat them like property. The author is consistent that slave often times are passed between several owners. The only relationship that exists between slaves and slave holders is that slaves are productive labor. They are treated like livestock or mere animals. The whole treatment of slaves is inhuman, absurd and cruel.
In his Narrative, Douglass contrasts the rural Eastern Shore of Maryland and Baltimore. While Baltimore is relatively calm with a sense of freedom while Maryland is the center of slavery and all that pertains to it. In Baltimore the relative freedom was worked out by a segment of non-holding persons mostly comprising of urban dwellers who advocated against cruelty towards slaves. The City standards ensured the people pursued their possibilities because of its openness. The first encounter of whites who side with Douglass is in Baltimore. However, in the rural part of Maryland, there is heightened surveillance of slaves by owners where there is the least amount of freedom and mobility for slaves.
In his encounter with The Colombian Orator which comprises of essays, poems and conversation at the age of 12 years, Douglass develops a keen interest in reading which sharpens his rudimentary skills in literature. Through reading he becomes aware of the injustice meted on slaves and thus becomes the journey to freedom. He particularly becomes interested with the Colombian Orator specifically the Master-slave dialogue as well as the speech about the Catholic emancipation. The two pieces of literature opens up Douglass’s mind that indeed slavery is wrong looking at it from political and philosophical point of view. The Colombian Orator is a symbol of the moral clause that all human have rights and worth. Because of its symbol of human rights, The Columbian Orator. also becomes a symbol of power. Hope becomes alive for those that follow it. Douglass lives out his life in a way to replicate The Columbian Orator, fighting and preaching about the rights that every human inherently has. In Baltimore, Douglass encounters white-owned ships along the Chesapeake Bay when he was physically and emotionally low. To him, the ships appeared to be a vision that represents his low emotional state. The man trips that the ships make top and fro from one port to another represented freedom from slavery. The ships white color to Douglass appeared to be angels –giving a hint of his spirituality or angels that will deliver him to freedom. In line with Douglass, and entirely many of his contemporaries, the Narrative is a result of creativity which is entirely truthful which is deliberately meant to arouse emotions and dehumanize the actions of slavery. Besides, Douglass’s soliloquy is unique indication of his sublime mind. Indeed, as much as Douglass’s experience was on worst that any human can endure, it points out relevant inhuman actions that slaves suffered in the hands of white oppressors. In short, Douglass’ passed a very relevant question that how the world could allow such an inhuman experience in the name of slavery to take place in the full glare of the world.
The Narration by Fredrick Douglass discusses very troubling practice that took place in eightieth century. Slavery and slave trade happened, white men abducted slaves and the slaves endured some of the most inhuman practices including forced and unpaid labor and sometimes death without reason. Douglass reminds readers that slavery happened. Since then it has gone unpunished because at that time seems to be normative. Douglass addresses the question of religion in which he vilifies false Christianity, a lost religion to which slave owners used to justify their own evils. However, he put more emphasis on education as tool that liberates the mind into freedom. The juxtaposition between the dehumanizing treatment of slaves and the chastity of their owners severs to humanize African Americans through the indictment of their lives.