So sorry I couldn't figur out how to work the blog, but now i got it.
So far I really like this book. I guess it's good to start with what are initial reactions are to the way he is writing this, and also what we think about his story in general? What's moving to you? What do you think is interesting rhetorically?
One of my favorite chapters so far was the one in which he talked about slave songs. Did anyone else like that one? I also thought that his motivation for learning to read was amazing. He was motivated so that he could be "useless" slave.
What do you think?
-em
20 comments:
Frederick Douglass is awesome! Despite his background, I think his writing is extremely advanced and articulate, and he keeps me in constant suspense. Also, considering the circumstances (one coarse linen shirt, no bed, an iota of mush every month), Douglass is tremendously open-minded and collected.
He is very persuasive but in an unusual way. His belief in certain human rights is quite apparent, but he does not construct an argument like most authors. He gives the facts and his honest observations and leaves conclusions up to the reader. I think one of his most powerful rhetorical devices is understatement. He does not directly assault the horrid plantation owners, most of whom had no reason to lash the young, starved slaves. I assumed any slave would want revenge. Douglass, though, seems to pity his masters. Possibly because of his faith, he often notes some of the overseers’ saving graces.
I had some questions about his life as a slave. Did he remember the exact words of the slaveholders? I mean, he could not write the quotes down because he had not learned how to write yet. Maybe what he heard was so traumatizing that he could not forget. The other question I would like to raise is—did he have friends or anyone to share his opinions with in the slave community? He hasn’t mentioned any conversations he had with his sister or one of the other children.
Finally, I also thought the slave songs chapter was amazing. Douglass explained, “The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears” (30). This, Emily Eisner, is truly moving. Because Douglass had so little, because of the pains he felt from constant subjection to barbarity, he appreciated every good deed and was inspired by even the slightest kind gesture.
Here are several questions/thoughts. Some are subjective, others objective. Reject them. Attack them. Support them. Respond as you wish. I am just trying to start some discussion and gain some clarity about certain parts of the story. (You may need to finish the book to answer some of them)
Why was Douglass staying at the Great House Farm? Who sent him there?
How did he end up living in the same house with the same master as his sister and then his uncle? Did he have several relatives? Did the slaveholders purposely assign his relatives and him to the same masters? Also, did Douglass have a primary master who made the final decision about where he would labor?
What kind of argument does Douglass make? (Look at argument note on e-board) Is it an argument of policy (states that something should or should not be done)? Is he seeking mutual ground or is he unilaterally asserting that slavery is unjust? Is his argument qualified because he reaches a conclusion after a logical process in which he considers many perspectives and angles?
What is his thesis?
Do you think he wanted revenge?
Was his marriage arranged?
Have Americans developed lazy attitudes over the past two centuries? I know this is general but consider how in the early to mid-1800s most young people learned trades and toiled with their hands, while today many people in the working world just sit at a desk in front of a computer e-mailing and answering phone calls.
Is there a connection between the naturalist and the abolitionist? Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote, “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” Can you compare the man poisoned by the influence of society or civilization and the man poisoned by an oppressive master? Aren’t they both enchained?
To answer my question--was his marriage arranged?--no. Anna Murray was a free black woman from Baltimore whom Douglass met before he escaped. He became engaged to her and after he escaped, they married in New York.
I also would like to begin to answer my other question about the naturalist and the abolitionist. I think there is a link between the two, but it is inexact. The slave is physically harmed by his/her oppressor and wants freedom from the whip. The naturalist, on the other hand, just wants no phone, no pool, no pets, no cigarettes. He/she wishes to escape polluted and cluttered civilization. I believe the naturalist's problem is a wealthy person's problem, while the slave's problem is not.
So I picked out the same thing as Yis, which is that Douglass writes with so much understatement. It makes everything he writes so much more real, I think, because he is describing how detached a person can become when a slave - how demoralizing slavery is - and in his writing you get a sense of this helplessness, and dehumanization. The parts of the story that are most powerfully and emotionally written are the parts of the story that reflect the feelings of himself and other slaves (like the slave song part...which again is just my favorite part ever).
What I gathered from the story is that Frederick Douglass had one primary owner why decided where Douglass worked all the time, but Douglass did not necessarily work under him. I found that a little confusing at times, like when he switched masters.
I agree that Douglass almost never talks about his relationship with other slaves. For example, I don't remember reading about Anna Murray until he marries her. Obviously he had met her before, but he didn't write about it. I wonder why he chose to describe himself as so distant from other people.
At the beginning, when talking about his mother, he said that he never felt close to her. He said that she used to come hold him at night (because she didn't work on the same plantation as he), but it didn't comfort him at all. I feel like this is just a testament to how demoralizing slavery was; most people would feel an emotional connection to his or her own mother, however Frederick Douglass was so dehumanized by slavery that he didn't even understand the connection between a mother and child. I don't know...this is just an idea.
I don't think that Douglass even mentioned talking to another slave until he talks about the school he created for teaching other slaves how to read.
Actually, I thought the fact the Frederick Douglass started a school-like thing to teach other slaves to read was just amazing! Obviously Frederick Douglass thought that reading was the key to finding a way out of slavery and into freedom, even if it just to the freedom to have your own thoughts and ideas. Reading, to Frederick Douglass opened up a whole new world of thought, and without learning to read, he would never have escaped slavery.
Also, the parallel between the religious worship of the white slave-owners and the reading-school that Douglass set up is amazing. I think (I may be wrong, though) that Douglass help his meetings on Sundays while the whites were going to church. So is he saying that his religion lied in reading and writing? And also, he discusses how the religious slave-holders are the worst because they are hypocritical, etc. I feel like religion is often hypocritical and oppressive to some party -- what do you guys feel?
Lastly, Yis, I really like your connection between the naturalists and abolitionists. There is definitely a connection between them -- the freedom of man -- however, slavery is the enslavement of people by other people, and is much more cruel than the impurities disliked by naturalists. I think its interesting that you pointed out that naturalism is a wealthy person's concern. My mother once told me that many black women have said that feminism is a white woman's concern, and that racism is much more serious.
Emily, although the Sabbath school was on Sunday, I don’t think he means teaching his fellow slaves was like a religious practice. But maybe it was. Helping others is a good deed. Being righteous is part of being religious, but teaching friends seems different than, say, going to church. I believe that once he realized the power of knowledge, he passed it on not because he felt compelled by his religious but because he wanted to. It is, however, a huge hypocrisy how the “pious” class-readers stormed into to the school to break up the learning sessions. By describing the school, Douglass supports his argument in two ways: 1. he seems honorable and intelligent because not only was he generous enough to spend his only free day helping others in a dangerous environment, but he was successful in teaching some of them how to read, and 2. the class-leaders, who believed education and slavery should not mix, were not deserving of belief because they acted in opposition to what they preached. In addition, I’m not sure it is fair to conclude that religion is often hypocritical. I just think slavery naturally contradicts Christianity.
I would like to bring up a few more ideas. First off, he uses a pirate analogy a couple of times, like when he relates the slave traders to pirates. He usually uses the analogy when he is making an important point. Why? Are pirates as evil and heartless as many of the slaveholders? I don’t think so. While I was amazed by most of his attempts to emphasize certain themes or details, I was not struck with the same power by the pirate comparisons.
Who is the intended audience? Historians and law enforcers may find this book useful or interesting, but whom was Douglass addressing? Yes, the people who accused him of not being a slave because of his incredible rhetoric; but Douglass must have been trying to persuade a different group, a more important group which could actually advance the abolitionist cause.
Oddly, his detached, straightforward, and unemotional tone does not make him seem less pained by the suffering of other slaves. How does he manage to convey such agony with such a formal and apparently objective style?
I also noticed how slavery is so infectious that it both crushes the slave and corrupts the slaveholder. The masters were not the only ones who whipped slaves; the family members also whipped them. Near the beginning of the book, he explains how the masters’ white sons whipped their mulatto slave sons. The masters often sold their slave sons so they did not have to see them being whipped.
Another example of a person other than a slave who was made vicious by slavery is Sophia Auld. She was generously teaching Douglass for some time until Mr. Auld interfered and turned Mrs. Auld into an especially cruel mistress who regarded slaves as “chattel,” or property. Lastly, as an example of slavery’s poisonous effect, Douglass mentions overseers who found pleasure in torturing the helpless men and women. For me, this sadism is the most alarming reality of the entire evil institution.
To answer the original questions, I love Frederick Douglass. His writing is so captivating. He is so detached from what he is writing it kept me wanting to know more about his life. Normally, I don't do well with stories that have traumatic events in them, but thinking about how he removes himself from the story it makes me think how many times he's had to tell his life to someone, how many times he's witnessed someone being beaten, how many times he himself has been beaten.
To answer another question, Douglass mentioned that he didn't have any ties to the plantation he was first on which was why, he said, it was so easy for him to go to the Auld's house. I think the only time he mentioned friends was when he was sold to Lucretia and had to leave the white kids who had helped him learn to read behind. It was amazing how genuinely grateful he was to those boys that he wanted to publicly thank them. While I'm sure he had acquaintances wherever he was, I got the vibe that Douglass kept mostly to himself. And if he did have friends, he didn't feel that they affected his life as much as the people he did mention. Just like whenever he quotes people, he does mention when he is not sure of what exactly the person said, but I think most of what he does quote are things that most people would never forget.
About the effects of slavery on the slaveholders, when Douglass explains that the masters sold their mulatto children because they didn't want to beat their children or their white siblings to beat on them, I thought Douglass says it in more of a thankful tone than oppose to most of the book in an ironic tone.
Bekkah, I agree with many of your observations. Douglass does come off as wise, soft-spoken, and withdrawn both as an author and slave. Although his language is somewhat wordy, he only writes about important facts, ideas, and emotions. He rarely loses focus which is what kept me so alert when I was reading it.
Also, thinking back on the section about the mulattos, I agree that Douglass sounded thankful, but he could not have appreciated the white slaveholders selling their slave sons that much, because those sons were the product of the white slaveholders raping slave women.
By the way, what is an ironic tone? Would that kind of tone be caused by understatement?
An ironic tone, I believe, can be partly conveyed by understatement (litotes), but I feel like usually, the TONE of irony, rather than the literal use of irony, comes from sarcasm. I see little to no sarcasm in the very real and concrete diction used by Douglass. But his use of understatement is almost disturbing. For instance, when discussing the amount of food one needs to survive, he describes the thought of food to the hungry man as "not the smallest consideration to a hungry man." (69, just before Chpt. X) Not the smallest means quite large, or in this case, the largest. What he really means to say is "I WAS REALLY HUNGRY AND THATS ALL I COULD THINK ABOUT!!" But in order to keep a calm and collected tone, so as to gain respect from his audience who might find any sass or wild language from an African-American to immediately deem him a simpleton, he constantly uses these types of understatement and litotes to tame the emotions and hatred that run wild in his mind. Basically, the purpose is to keep him from sounding too emotional.
One passage I found particularly interesting was when he talked about how, at times, he wished he was a simpleton, and that he hadn't learned how to read:"I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing...I have often wished myself a beast...I envied my fellow slaves for their stupidity." This absolution of his mental bonds, the freedom to think, gave him the knowledge of the possibility of more. But it also showed him that he did not have it himself. This tormented him greatly. I find this whole idea intriguing: That freedom to think can actually cause you more pain, at times, then pleasure. He wishes himself stupid like the other slaves, so that he can forget the possibility of better times. He wishes himself dumber so that he would never have to think intelligently about his horrid condition. This idea is similar to another about hunger, where he wishes that had never been fed so well by his previous master, because now as his current master feeds him so little, he feels great hunger, while the other slaves who had never seen better, never seen the slightly more fortunate life he saw in Baltimore, were not suffering the same pains. The theme of regretting that which shows you your tormentor is seen in both of these.
I found in the back of the book, in the afterword, that Frederick Douglass wrote this in response to the claim that he was not actually a former-slave. People had thought that he was to educated and eloquent to possibly have been born into slavery. Just something to think about when look at his purpose and audience. His purpose is to refute the claims; the audience is the people who doubt his past, esspecially considering the the publication of this book in ?1881? (c.1800s)
I have a different edition than Yis and Emily I know, so you might not have the afterword, but its after the appendix, at the very end.
I'm a little unsure of this myself, because of his sometimes overly concise style, and his lack of dialogue to show real time events. I said before it was to keep his audience from thinking him uneducated or overly emotional, but now, with this in mind, that seems contradictory. What do you think?
EDIT: Ahh! Idea. Maybe the lack of dialogue went along with his careful consideration of the rights of his friends and family? He mentions that when he talks about he lack of information regarding his escape from slavery.
Nash, I also think, as I said before, that he uses understatement to convey his detachment towards his "life" as a slave. I mean (this is going to sound cheesy, but) life as a slave isn't really living -- you are alive but you are being treated as property and you are not experiencing any pleasure. Although I agree that he is also trying to sound respectful with the tone that he uses, because he was writing at a time in which slavery still existed, he also meant to portray how un-lifelike slavery was.
About the reading group he started, and how reading in general affected his life: When he first went to live with the Aulds, Mrs. Auld started teaching him to read and then Mr. Auld condemned her and said that teaching a slave to read would ruin him and make him useless as a slave. Douglass says "I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty -- to wit, the white man's power to enslave the black man. It was a grand achievement, and I prized it highly. From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom." To me, it seems that reading was the tool that Douglass preached to his fellow slaves later in his life. Literacy was "the answer" for him. I also just think that it is amazing the way he tells the story of being introduced to reading. He says that without his mistress's kindness and his master's out-right cruelty, he would never have had the motive for learning to read and eventually escaping.
Also, Nash, it's worth noting that when Douglass recalls Mr. Auld telling his wife not to teach Douglass to read, he recalls his master saying "As to himself (frederick douglass), it (the ability to read) could do him no good, but a great deal of harm. I would make him discontent and unhappy." This relates to what you thought was interesting about what Frederick Douglass actually thought later on, wish that he were less knowledgeable and less intelligent. Furthermore, doesn't it seem like Mr. Auld is admitting that slaves are only sedated from rebelling because they don't have the knowledge or tools to understand why they should rebel. Maybe this is incredibly naive and silly of me, but I sort of always assumed that slave-holders actually thought of their slaves as property and not really as people, but now it seems that Mr. Auld knew that Frederick was actually just a deprived person. This is a slaveholder admitting that a person needs to be oppressed to be kept as a slave.
Well that's a possibility of course, Nash. I'm sure that at the time he was writing he had to be very careful what names he wrote so that people didn't get hurt, or whatever. However, I am inclined to think that he also just didn't have many relationships with other slaves. I think that he experienced things differently than other slaves because he knew how to read, so he felt, understood, and wouldn't accept the oppression that many slaves seemed to succumb to.
Nash, you mentioned the lack of dialogue. That is interesting because Douglass also never describes the appearance of the land, the plantations, or the houses. I think he only wanted to detail the most important aspects of his slave life. Maybe he was just too distracted to absorb visual images. Labor probably replaced chatter; interest in pleasing the master probably replaced interest in the scenery.
Also Nash, the Afterword is in my book and I read about how Douglass was accused of being a liar; however, his purpose had to have been much deeper—he did not write 80 or so pages to simply disprove these critics.
It makes sense that Douglass is detached because he published the book after spending some time in free states and becoming more accustomed to a middle class lifestyle. But I don’t think he always sounds detached. For example, on page 113, he laments, “Let [the white man] be a fugitive slave in a strange land—a land given up to be the hunting-ground for slaveholders...I say, let him place himself in my situation...wanting shelter, and no one to give it—wanting bread, and no money to but it...I say, let him be placed in this most trying situation.” He may try to keep his emotions out of his prose, but in this paragraph he sounds utterly desperate!
Why do we assume he tried so hard to sound intelligent? Couldn’t he just be a naturally skilled author? He must have had some gift if he could read “The Columbian Orator” when he was twelve and had just learned to read. He may have written with an almost overly formal style because he wanted respect and thought educated readers would listen to him if he sounded like them. Maybe he wanted revenge at the slaveholders who did not allow him any education. But these possibilities seem farfetched. I think he was just trying to present a clear, honest, and powerful account of his slave life and escape. He could best achieve this end with articulacy and advanced rhetoric.
Emily, I think slaveholders did think of slaves as property. They obviously knew, though, that the slaves had brains. That is why they made it their goal to destroy the power to reason and hence suppress the desire to rebel.
What if Douglass' diction is a measure of his freedom? Think about it, the only thing he wanted after he knew what it was and how to obtain it was his freedom. As Emily pointed out, Douglass said after he had realized why Auld had forbade his wife from teaching Douglass how to read, he "understood the pathway from slavery to freedom" and that was what he wanted. The fact that he could read "The Columbian Orator" when he just started understanding the English language, proves how much and how much he was willing to do to get on the path to freedom. Furthermore, as Nash said, he was writing in a time where slavery was still common, twenty years before the Civil War ended (it was published in 1845), which would be a reason to keep the names of the people he felt were close to him or helped him in some way private. Although I do agree with Emily, I don't think he had very many slave friends mainly because he didn't plan on being a slave for life, and therefore he probably didn't want to associate much with being a slave.
OR, maybe the reason why he was so careful as to not mention really any slave by name, except for the deceased, so those slaves whom he felt connected to would not be subjected to punishment by their masters. Possibly?
As far as the descriptive scenery, or lack there of, I think this ties in with Douglass' view on staying a slave. I wouldn't think you would like to remember as much as you can, let alone dwell on the details of something Douglass thought was as insignificant as a former plantation he was trapped at. Not only that, but when someone goes through something that traumatic, sometimes it's hard for them to remember anything other than what stood out to them, let alone just the main facts.
No, I think he purposely left out a lot of detail about the land and people on purpose. He is so precise and careful with the facts that he does share; he remembers all of his masters' names, etc.
Yis, I think that he needed to sound intelligent and reasonable in his writing to prove that black people can achieve the same knowledge and abilities as white people.
One thing that Bekkah and I talked about today in school is how this is the first time that either of us have really felt passionately about how serious slavery was, and how terrible it was to slaves. I mean, obviously both of us new that slavery was wrong and horrible before reading this, but I have never felt this much emotion about it. Frederick Douglass brings his reader into his life. I think that his writing vacillates between very calm and understated, and very powerful and angry according to how he was feeling at that point in his life...maybe, I'm not sure if it exactly lines up, but certainly when he was younger and didn't know how to read less, he seemed less passionate about abolishing slavery.
Well, I just cam across a passage in which Douglass talks about other slaves that he connected with and talked to. it's in chapter X (in my book it's on pages 114-115) when Douglass is describing the school that he taught to teach other slaves how to read. he says "The work of instructing my dear fellow-slaves was was the sweetest engagement with which I was ever blessed. We loved each other..." later in the chapter (pgs. 116-117) he talks more bout specific friends he had... although he never calls them friends: "I went to Henry first, next to John, then to the others. I found, in them all, warm hearts and noble spirits. ?They were ready to hear, and ready to act when a feasible plan should be proposed. This was what I wanted. I talked to them of our want of manhood, if we submitted to our enslavement without at least on noble effort to be free. We met often, and consulted frequently, and told out hopes and fears, recounted the difficulties, real and imagined, which we should be called on to meet."
So, that's a place in which it is clear that he had a lot of interaction with other slaves... although it seems to me that in both cases (trying to escape and the reading school) he is in a position of leadership probably because he was the most educated.
What do you guys think?
I still speculate that as a slave, Douglass spent much more time observing and thinking than talking with friends. Even if he was a real chatterbox, I do not think he wanted to waste his words with summaries of conversations he had. Since he was addressing, among other groups, the white pro-slavery southerners and law enforcers, I think Douglass was careful not to include any visuals or exchanges that were not directly related to his argument.
New Topic. Much more important. This may have been suggested already, but I want to declare it and make it known to all you bloggers: Douglass, as an author, a fighter, and a person, is absolutely amazing. I want to make sure we all appreciate this little book and Douglass' huge character. He may have escaped from slavery, but he wrote this narrative as if he escaped from oxford.
I absolutely agree. I think the reason Douglass was always in a leadership position is because of he education. It may also be because Douglass was well liked among the other slaves (at least it seems so) after Douglass mustered up enough courage to strike his master so he was never thoroughly whipped again. For that I think he was considered an admirable person.
And touching back on what Emily said we discussed, I know it seems weird, because slavery is basically the first thing we're taught in history, and we all know how horrible it is, but Douglass' autobiography was the first time I felt so much emotion for every slave involved. Never have I read something so, as Yis said, "unusually persuasive" about the Civil War. By the end of the book I didn't want believe that such a large group of people did something so inhumane. Did anyone else feel that way?
And yes, I agree with you too Yis! (my previous post was directed towards Emily's last post...sorry) I absolutely adore this book. It's incredible that not only did he teach himself to write and read, but he taught himself enough to be more eloquent than many people alive today. And to have written his life and publish it two decades before the Civil War ended, is phenomenal.
Yes Bekkah, I felt that way too. Normally, we are presented with the history of American slavery from a very distant, 3rd person, impersonal way, or at least thats how I've recalled it. Never before have a heard such vivid detail like “Mr. Gore then, without consultation or deliberation with any one, not even giving Demby an additional call, raised his musket to his face, taking deadly aim at his standing victim, and in an instant poor Demby was no more. His mangled body sank out of sight, and blood and brains marked the water where he had stood.”
Those kind of passages just leave you stunned, floored, unable to comprehend that people in America could do such a thing, when our Constitution had stated such moral and ethical ideals that all men are created equal. It makes me wonder how history will view our time, and whether we will look back and wonder how wire tapping or torture or any other act by America could be allowed.
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