Can It Get More Obvious?: New World, New Motivation

For the next two chapters of The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, I found it very interesting how Douglass shows the way he has evolved as a person. When he was living in the South in Colonel Lloyd's plantation, he lived and witnessed the most tremendous events one can see. In chapters one through four, it's evidenced that he had to see terrible whippings and deaths, not to mention he himself lived in miserable conditions, "In hottest summer and coldest winter, I was kept almost naked..." (Douglass, p. 39). However, later on chapter 5, Douglass narrates how his early years of misery working as a slave under Colonel Lloyd's watch came to an end and a new phase in his life emerged. That's when he discovered a new world.

When I talk about the new world, what I really mean is a place where there are no plantations, slaves are not publicly whipped or killed, and where slaves's jobs range from cooking to baby sitting. In other words, the North. Douglass was taken to Baltimore to live with Hugh Auld and as he said, "...[he] left it with joy." (Douglass, p. 40). From that moment of knowing he was leaving his old plantation, his motivation began: "...the people in Baltimore were very cleanly...she was going to give me a pair of trousers...the thought of owning a pair of trousers was great indeed!" (Douglass, p. 40).

When he got to Baltimore, to him, everything was amazing. He only saw one bad thing and it was the cruel lashings that the neighbor slaves (Mary and Henrietta) went through. Other than that, he loved his new home: "A city slave is almost a freeman...he is much better fed and clothed, and enjoys privileges altogether unknown to the slave on the plantation" (Douglass, p. 46). It was in Baltimore where the spark of his desire and motivation to learn how to be literate began. Mrs. Auld, his mistress, taught him the ABC's and very basic spelling lessons. Later, Mr. Auld prohibited her to keep teaching him, since "Learning would spoil the best n----r in the world" and "He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master" (Douglass, p. 45). But those words were exactly the main motivation for Douglass to learn more. His goal was set and nothing would bring him down: "Whilst I was saddened by the thought of losing the aid of my kind mistress, I was gladdened by the invaluable instruction which...I had gained from my master. Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn to read" (Douglass, p. 45).

I'm just curious and interested to know in what sorts of trouble Douglass will get in order to achieve what he wants.

Now to finish, I'll take a moment to add some vocabulary words that were new to me.

Galling: (adj.) Annoying, humiliating