61 pages • 2-hour read
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
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Themes
Slavery’s Dehumanization
Slavery is presented as an institution that dehumanizes both enslaved people and their enslavers. Douglass’s experience is unusual in that he did not work in the fields until he was 16. He was sent to Hugh Auld in Baltimore when he was quite young. Douglass recounts that enslaved people in cities were somewhere in between free people and enslaved people on plantations. He taught himself to read and write while in Baltimore, and he developed a growing sense of autonomy and self-worth. Because of this, Thomas Auld believed Douglass to be useless when he returned to the plantation, and he sent Douglass to Edward Covey to be “broken.” Douglass describes how Covey’s violence and cruelty crushed his spirit, writing, “the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!” (88).
When Douglass later resisted Covey, it “rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom and revived within [him] a sense of [his] own manhood” (97), as he asserted his own humanity. In revealing how slavery corroded his sense of self, Douglass shows that enslaved people are not lesser than white people; they are simply prevented from reaching their potential, as slavery systematically prevents Black people from thriving. He proves this in the final chapter, when he describes thriving emancipated people in the North who live in fine houses, “evidently enjoying more of the comforts of life, than the average of slaveholders in Maryland” (139). Douglass observes that these free people also enjoy increased moral, intellectual, and spiritual well-being, compared to Southern enslavers. For example, Douglass writes that his friend Nathan Johnson “lived in a neater house; dined at a better table; took, paid for, and read, more newspapers; better understood the moral, religious, and political character of the nation,—than nine tenths of the slaveholders in Talbot county Maryland” (139). In showing that Black people are as capable as white people, Douglass demonstrates how slavery has suppressed an entire population and challenges white superiority. This final chapter also refutes the idea that slavery was essential for Southern wealth, with the prosperous North proving that slavery’s economic benefits do not compensate for its evils.
Douglass also examines how slavery affects white people to illustrate how it corrupts everything it comes into contact with. He argues that the institution makes enslavers more cruel and more angry; the power they are given over enslaved people is morally corrosive. For example, Douglass points to high rates of rape and adultery, particularly enslavers fathering children with enslaved women through sexual abuse and violence, which damages the enslaver’s family and undermines Christian teachings, turning fathers into enslavers and children into chattel. Sophia Auld’s transformation from a kindhearted person to a cruel person is Douglass’s main example of how slavery transforms everyone, even white people. She shifts from a good woman to a “demon” (54) who is so afraid of Douglass gaining power that she becomes harsh and unforgiving. Slavery is thus shown to change people for the worse, and Douglass argues it must be abolished for the good of both enslaved people and enslavers.
Slavery and Christianity
Douglass draws a distinction between the Christianity of enslavers and the Christianity of Christ. He argues that the Christianity practiced by enslavers functioned as a cover for their brutality and inhumanity, for Christianity is “pure, peaceable, and impartial,” and stands in opposition to the “corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land” (143). The rape that was common on plantations is a perversion of Christian values, for example, as adultery and violence violate Christian teachings while undermining the family unit.
Enslavers like Thomas Auld used religion as a shield to ignore their sins against other human beings. In fact, Douglass argues that religious enslavers are the most cruel, as they use their faith to justify their abusive behavior. As evidence that Christian enslavers are more concerned with power than Christ’s teachings, Douglass highlights how Mr. Wilson’s Bible study group for enslaved people was violently broken up by so-called religious leaders. He writes:
My blood boils as I think of the bloody manner in which Messrs. Wright Fairbanks and Garrison West, both class-leaders, in connection with many others, rushed in upon us with sticks and stones, and broke up our virtuous little Sabbath school, at St. Michael’s—all calling themselves Christians! humble followers of the Lord Jesus Christ! But I am again digressing (105).
This proves that enslavers like Fairbanks and West are not dedicated to faith, for if they were, they would try to spread the word of God rather than suppress it. The perversion of religious faith is another example of how slavery corrupts everything around it.
Knowledge and Ignorance
A significant theme in Douglass’s autobiography is the importance of knowledge. When Sophia Auld began teaching Douglass to read, Hugh Auld reacted strongly against it, arguing that education would ruin Douglass, for “he would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master. As to himself, it could do him no good, but a great deal of harm. It would make him discontented and unhappy” (54). Hugh was correct: The more Douglass learned about the world, the more he despised slavery and desired freedom. In that moment, Douglass realized something fundamental:
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 (55).
For Douglass, the pathway to freedom was knowledge that would enable self-sufficiency. He taught himself how to read and write, devising various strategies to learn despite the prohibition on learning. One book, The Columbian Orator, was particularly important for it included Sheridan’s speeches on Catholic emancipation and a dialogue between an enslaved man and his enslaver in which the enslaved man convinces his enslaver to free him. From the dialogue, Douglass learns “the power of truth over the conscience of even a slaveholder,” and from Sheridan’s writing, he discovers “a bold denunciation of slavery, and a powerful vindication of human rights” (60). These two texts informed his strategy moving forward. However, Douglass’s increased knowledge also made slavery more unbearable, causing considerable pain and suffering.
Preventing enslaved people from reading and writing served two functions. It kept them ignorant, and it limited their world to life on the plantation or in the city. The limitation on learning extended beyond reading and writing. Douglass opens the book by reflecting on how he doesn’t know when he was born or the details of his paternity. This hinders his sense of individuality, and with no real way of marking the passage of time, the specificity of his experiences becomes more abstract. Douglass argues that withholding personal details is deliberate as a way of keeping enslaved people ignorant to their own realities:
[T]o make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is right; and he can be brought to that only when he ceases to be a man (123).
Preventing enslaved people from learning meant that enslaved people could not tell their own stories, ensuring that narratives of slavery were shaped by white enslavers. Keeping enslaved people ignorant thus upheld slavery as an institution. Knowledge was dangerous because it could provide a framework for enslaved people to describe and recognize the injustices of slavery, to recognize themselves as human beings rather than dehumanized enslaved people. This autobiography stands as proof of knowledge’s potential to empower: It enabled Douglass to educate himself, escape slavery, become an abolitionist, and write this autobiography, taking control of his personal narrative and influencing the broader narrative of slavery, which helped fuel the abolitionist movement.
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