Post on Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

The Narrative of Frederick Douglass has many quotes that I thought put an emphasis on how detrimental slavery truly was. On page 20, Douglass says, “Never having enjoyed, to any considerable extent, her soothing presence, her tender watch and care, I received the tidings of my mother’s death with much the same emotions I should have probably felt at the death of a stranger.” This quote truly signifies the cruelties of slavery, including the separation of family bonds due to the purchasing of slaves. Douglass recalls nothing much of a mother-son relationship that he wishes he had, and imagines their relationship as something similar to tenderness and soothing. Douglass’s mother is nothing but a mere memory because she died when Frederick was at the age of 7, and even after her death he was not permitted to attend the funeral of his own mother. This act is overwhelmingly dehumanizing; the outlawing of attending a person’s own family member’s funeral deprived Douglass of the memories he had the potential of making with his mother. However, Frederick Douglass recalls that his mother worked and toiled during the day, yet his mother visited him during the night and watched him sleep. Unfortunately when Douglass woke in the morning, he never saw his mother beside him. Using the words “soothing presence and her tender watch and care,” Douglass refers to a certain memory that he hoped he had with his mother instead of having no memories of her at all. He says that because there was a lack of an essential mother and son bond that should be endowed to all children, he refers to his mother’s death the same way in which he would have responded to a stranger’s death.
Frederick Douglass also clears up some of the common misconceptions that were held back in the era of slavery. When the northerners visited the South to see the cruelties of slavery, most saw happiness and contentment whenever slaves were in church singing gospels. On page 29, the book reads, “I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meaning of those rude and apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle; so that I neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear.” Before Frederick Douglass learned to read and write, he was not fully exposed to everything that the world had to offer. He had been sheltered in the realms of slavery, not aware that there was a world in the North where slavery was not permitted. Therefore Douglass and among many others misconstrued the meaning of slaves singing. Eventually he came to understand that slaves did not sing because they were satisfied with their lives, but because singing songs was the only way to fully express their sorrows and their tormented souls. Slaves drowned their unhappiness in the songs they sang, something that was the only escape available for slaves at the time.
I think these two quotations from the autobiography are extremely powerful; both explain the horrible conditions of slavery that both emotionally and mentally grasped the attentions of many readers.
Posted by Jennifer J.