1. Summary
Douglass starts off his narrative with what he knows and doesn’t know about his birth in Tuckahoe Maryland: “I have no accurate knowledge of my age” (Lee 327). He neither can positively identify his father. He saw his mother only four or five times in his life. His own treatment on the plantation of his slave master was typical to that of other slave children. He experienced increased liberty when sent to Baltimore city to work for a ship carpenter. His new master’s wife taught him A, B, C before the husband forbids her insisting that teaching him to read “would forever unfit him to be a slave” (Lee 339). However, Douglass states that “I succeeded in learning to read and write … [through] various stratagems.” He later engages in forceful resistance to slavery as he is exchanged among different slave masters.
2. Response
Reading Douglass’ writing reveals that he was an individual endowed with exceptional intelligence and perception that we are only able to acknowledge because he made efforts to learn to read and write. Like many other slaves, the institution of slavery had conditioned in a setting that denied any intelligence in him and instead punished his efforts to explore his potential.
His writing makes major ethical and epistemological arguments, with his single overriding goal being to expose the gross evils of slavery and the justification to abolish it. It is only because he learned to read and write that readers of his works can see the rationale of his point of view. Douglass depicts slavery as the direct product of “irresponsible power” which is in itself immoral. This translates the slavery was immoral while the action of Douglass to learn and write despite being forbidden was only a demonstration of his rights and the human character to strive towards equity and self-advancement.
Learning to read and write enabled Douglass to manipulate the necessary documents for his escape. This means that language plays a greater role in human freedom and denying a person the expression of language (especially reading and writing). Douglass is able to appreciate the idea of freedom the more he gained knowledge which translates that it was by no means immoral of him to learn reading and writing. In doing so, Douglass was treating himself as an individual deserving to be truly free with the right to knowledge.
Reference:
Jacobus, Lee A. A World of Ideas: Essential Readings for College Writers. , 2013. Print.
