“Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself,” qualifies as a slave narrative. More So it qualifies as a testament to the only force capable of liberating an individual from bondage, an education. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself, details the courageous journey of; Frederick Douglass, a man born a slave in 1818 and before his death in 1895 he would educate himself and work tirelessly for the abolition of slavery in America. Seeing slavery end in 1865 Douglass wrote for the liberation of women and the standard of freedom and liberty for all individuals.
Douglass was relocated from a plantation to the urban center of Baltimore where he lived as a slave in a house. In his new home young Douglass was taught the basics of reading by the mistress of the house, a woman named Sophia, which lucky for young Douglass, means Wisdom. In his first book Douglass recounts meeting Sophia for the first time. “My new mistress to prove to be all she appeared when I first met her at the door, a woman of the kindest heart and finest feelings should never have a sleeve under her control previously to myself, and prior to her marriage she had been dependent on her own industry for a living. She was by trade a weaver; and buy a constant application of her business, she had been in a good degree preserved from the dehumanizing effect of slavery… her face was made of heavenly smile’s, and her voice of tranquil music.” (Works in an Anthology 1185)
Sophia was scolded by her husband for attempting to educate young Douglass. The point was made clear that if Douglass was educated it would forever ruin his ability to be enslaved. Sophia had been poisoned against him and the sting of that loss burned young Douglass. From then on Sophia had turned against the boy and would admonish him cruelly for attempting to read or educate himself. “But alas! This kind heart had a short time to remain such. The fatal poison of irresponsible power was already in her hands, in soon commenced it’s infernal work. “(Works in an Anthology 1185) Douglass knew that there would never again be the kind offering of education in his home. He had had a moments fleeting glimpse into the freedom that education provided. It was just what I wanted, and I got it at a time when I least expected it.” (Works in an Anthology 1186) Showing uncanny resolve for a child, Douglass set himself to following the crumbs fortune and fate were graciously leaving him.
Educating himself could be his only concern. It was his mind that needed to grow wings not his body if he was to ever be free and able to pursue a life of liberty and success. It is this which shows the most important of the journey Douglass made from slave to freeman and what accounts most to qualify his narrative as a great American epic of liberation and as a literary slave epic. If Douglass were emancipated by luck or by simply being liberated from bondage by the success of the abolitionist movement. Frederick Douglass wrought an education out of any instance or source he could. His education is the qualifying aspect of his successful liberation from slavery. “From that moment I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom..Will stay I was saddened by the thought of losing my kind mistress, I was gladden by the invaluable instructions which... I had gained from my master. So conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I said I was high hopes, and a fix purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read.(Works in an Anthology 1186) Reading, the ability to decipher one of man’s oldest and best guarded technologies. Technology has always been used against the underclass and the minoritized peoples throughout history. The pocket watch was used by foremen during the industrial revolution to steal hours away from workers lives, simply because they didn’t have the technology to establish time themselves. Douglass treated reading as proper technology and changed the history of a nation with it.
Ironically it was the fearful manner in which Mr. Hughs, the master of Douglass’ house, spoke to Sophia that alerted young Douglass to the importance of learning to read and write. “The very decided manner with which he spoke, and she drove to impress his wife with the evil consequences of giving me instruction, serve to convince me....It gave me the best assurance that I may rely with the utmost confidence on the results which, he said, would flow from teaching me to read.” (Works in an Anthology 1186) Had Mr. Hughes been a bit more cool and coy he might have not ignited the flame of learning in the heart of America’s greatest student. “What he dreaded most, that I most desired. What he most loved, that I most hated. That which to him was a great evil, was to me a great good, to be diligently sought, any argument which he so warmly urged, against my learning to read, only serve to inspire me with the desire and determination to learn. And learning to read, I owe almost as much to the better opposition of my master, as to the kindly eight of my mistress. I acknowledge the benefit of both.” (Works in an Anthology 1186) Here Douglass shows the true depth of his genius. Frederick Douglass made teachers out of everyone he met, not just those that might be kindly towards him.
Showing a balance of mind that many simply don’t possess, Douglass forgave Sophia and in doing so further detailed his time and life living in the Hugh residence. This time spent there would ultimately culminate in his self administered education. “I lived ...Hughes family about seven years. During this time...I was compelled to resort to very stratagems. I had no regular teacher. My mistress...had, in compliance...had set her face against my being instructed by anyone else... however to my mistress to save her, that she did not adopt this course of treatment immediately. She at first laugh of the depravity and indispensable to shutting me into mental darkness.” (Works in an Anthology 1187) Douglass gives a critical insight into the life of developing cruelty and evil as he spares Sophia the shame of being a mindless wife in the thrall of her husband and allows her the time and temperament to develop into someone who would deprive a child of an education. It was at least necessary for her to have some training in the exercise of irresponsible power, to make her equal to the task of treating me as though I were a brute.” (Works in an Anthology 1187) Douglass was very aware of the processes and transformations that affected Sophia. He showed amazing compassion for his fall from grace.
In this warning to those that would indulge evil and enslave the will of another, Douglass wrote about the physical and emotional changes that plagued Sophia. He watched those evils and ills return to her once kindly and beautiful self. “Slavery proved his injuries to her as it did to me. When I went there, she was at pious, warm, and tender hearted woman. There was no sorrow or suffering for which she had not a tear. She had bread for the hungry, clothes for the naked, and comfort for every little mortal that came within her reach. Slavery soon prove its ability to divest her of these heavenly qualities.… The first step in her downward course was in her ceasing to instruct me. She...commence to practice her husbands precepts. She finally became even more violent and her opposition that her husband himself… Nothing seem to make her more angry than seeing me with a newspaper… I have had her rush at me with a face made all of fury, and snatch from me a newspaper, in a manner that revealed her apprehension.“(Works in an Anthology 1187) Sophia, once beauty and wisdom had been twisted and perverted into a cruel mistress, full of fear and illness. Without a teacher and with limited and brief access to reading materials Douglass could not practice the technology and would not be able to master it and drive his liberty to freedom.
Despite their attempts at quelling the fire within Douglass’ heart, his will proved too great and in turn illuminated his mind to newer and much more clever plots to obtain his education. “ ...all this, however was too late. The first step had been taken. Mistress, and teaching me the alphabet, hey give me the inch in a precaution could prevent me from taking the ell. The plan which I adopted, and the one by which I was most successful, what is that of making friends with all the little white boys whom I met in the street. As many of these as I could, I converted into teachers and with their kindly aid obtain a different times in different places, I finally succeeded in learning to read. “ (Works in an Anthology 1187-1188) These unsupervised childhood ramblings became culture and classroom to young Douglass. Here he was able to finally obtain the skills he needed, but he still needed some bait if he was going to be a successful fisher of men.
Douglass knew that the days of starvation were at least temporarily suspended. “ I used to also carry bread with me, enough of which was always in the house, and to which I was always welcome; if I was much better off in this regard than many of the poor white children in our neighborhood...the hungry little urchins, who, in return, would give me the more valuable bread of knowledge.” (Works in an Anthology 1188) Feeding these children gave him both knowledge and friendship. He was paying for his education himself, but he was also developing relationships with children of other races and social classes. An important fact that Douglass reflected on. “I used to talk this matter of slavery over with them. You will get to be free as soon as you are twenty-one, but I am a slave for life! Have no I has good a right to be free as you have? These words use the trouble of them; they would express for me the liveliest sympathy, and consoled me with the hope that something would occur by which I might be free.” ( Works in an Anthology 1188) Douglass stops short of naming the children, who would by then be adults, but might expose them or their families to violence.
Frederick Douglass and his novel; Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself, deserves to be regarded as a slavery epic because it not only fulfills the plot requirements of those great tales, but more importantly gives the key element required for anyone to be truly free, and education and the will to use it.
Emerson - Self Reliance
Ralph Waldo Emerson lived for his search of himself in the archetypical reflection he saw in Nature. Emerson knee that in order for the Individual to manifest themselves against the static background of the Group? They must attune their heart string to the proper chord. “To believe your own thought, to believe that is what is true for you and your private heart, is true for all men, that is genius...for always the innermost becomes the outmost-and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpet of the last judgment.“(Works in an Anthology 236) Genius is presented here as a by product of individual tuning of the heart. Recognizing the genius within ourselves requires our recognition of genius and individuality of all others.
How does one recon use when they’ve been illuminated by divine inspiration? The inspiration of genius should both thrill and chill the individual. Genius will take away the quiet life of resignation and desperation that were very apt to grow not only comfortable with l, but protective of. The illusion of the world requires one to be asleep, to Dream. Easy vigilance is required to capture lighting in a bottle. “A man should learn to detect and watch the gleam of light which flash to the cross his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he didn’t dismiss is without notice this thought, because it is his. And every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts, they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.” (Works in an Anthology 236) This flash of light across the mind is of course inspiration. The Jeffersonian adage about inspiration and perspiration still holds court. Genius requires inspiration but also the fires of action, doing something with inspiration lest it become so many awe inspiring, but forgotten dazzle of invisible lighting.
This evaluation of inspiration must adhere to the logic that your internal compass is as valuable as the laws and regulation of the world at large. So long as you aren’t causing undue suffering, your hearts logic is sound. “Trust I self: every heartbreak every heart vibrates to the iron string. Except the place the divine providence is found for you; the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so and confide in themselves childlike to the genius of their age, which ring the perception that the eternal was staring in their heart, working through their hands, we’re dominating in all they’re being. And we are now man, and must except in the highest mine the same transcendent destiny; and not pinch in the corner that cowards fling before revolution, but redeemers and benefactors, piois “Trust I self: every heartbreak every heart vibrates to that iron string. Except the place the divine providence is found for you; the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so and confide in themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying the perception that the eternal was stirring in their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all they’re being. And we are now men, and must except in the highest mine the same transcendent destiny; and not pinch in the corner that cowards fling before revolution, but redeemers and benefactors, pious aspirants to be noble clay plastic under the Almighty effort, let us advance and advance and Chaos and the Dark.” (Works in an Anthology 237) Emerson illuminates the individuals position as a star in a sea of darkness. The efforts of the inspired and enlightened individual must be anchored in the human responsibility to shine the way for others. This responsibility and the efforts towards maintaining the tension of responsibility is the lynchpin of Emerson’s American Individual.
The American, the individual amongst groups, must be able to stand alone against the tide of popular opinion. “Who so would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather in mortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is it last a secret but the integrity of our own buying. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have to suf whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather in mortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is that last sacred but the integrity our own buying. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.” (Works in an Anthology 238) To quote South American poet Fernando Pessoa, an acolyte of Whitman; Abdicate and become King of yourself.” The American Individual is culpable to society and their groups, but the individual knows in their heart that they ultimately answer to themselves regardless of the acclaim or distain leveled by society. Often the individual must take refuge within nature to feel internally for oneself without the distraction of the urbane & profane to distract them. Refuge from civilization. Refuge from the harsh successes of society.
Society though was the greatest obstacle to Emerson. Man too refuge from himself in the burrows of society. They, social man, are able to criticise and label based on the perceived virtue of their tenuous grip on civility and civics. Emerson would gladly play antiChrist to these false pious. “they do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the devil child, I will live then from the devil. No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature good and bad I butt name is very readily transferred to this or that; the only right is what is after by constitution, really wrong is what it is against it a man is to carry him himself in the presence of all opposition as if everything were titular and ephemeral but he.” (Works in an Anthology 238) Emerson knew that God dwelt in the center of the individual, not the center of the town nor the center of the Church. Emerson understood that all the symbols of society would attempt to cow and shame the Individual into bowing out of their marathon towards individual freedom. “I am a shame to think how easily we are capitulate to badges and names to large societies and dead institutions. “(Works in an Anthology 238) Society would use the various groups that a once virtuous society accumulated and organized to protect itself. Those protection would now serve the dead in spirit that reside in the chambers of power.
To deal with these living dead, Emerson tackled the problem of being good and dealing with relative evil; “Your goodness must have some edge to it else it is not the doctrine of hate must be preached as a counterence of the doctrine of love when it pules and wines.” (Works in an Anthology 239) Hate as a weapon against poisoned love. The alchemical balance still is not settled and the good have to wield the icy flame of hate to cut through the vulgar masses once they encroach on goodness and the virtue of individuality. But, how does one know if they are, as they believe they are. How is this idea of individuality not insanity, as the Old World, the orthodox world, would have us believe? Emerson again sought that refuge within himself and not without. If he was not harming himself or others then his judgment was sound enough to make logic out of. “... I actually am, and do not needed for my own insurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony. “ (Works in an Anthology 239) Am I? Emerson felt that answer could only be found within. To find that undeniable aspect of individuality is to find it within everyone you meet. For Emerson this wasn’t identity, which could be exchanged as commodity, but the intrinsic value of individual existence. It is this internalized ideal that we ought to strive towards. Becoming that ideal we become our true self, free of the hang ups of identity and liberated from the profane compromises required of society.
Levine, Robert S. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. W. W. Norton & Company., 2017.
