The Frederick Douglass Roller Coaster

After reading chapters seven through nine, I realized I felt multiple different emotions. Those chapters were a complete roller coaster not only for me as a reader, but for Frederick Douglass himself. He lived through high points and low points, and as I wanted the good parts to continue, suddenly something rough occurred. 

Chapter seven begins with a negative note that was left off at the previous chapter: Douglass's mistress stopped teaching him how to read. That did made me feel bad for Douglass, since he lost that privilege. However, the narration makes a positive turn when he begins to learn on his own. He had enough devotion and dedication to initiate such a thing and that's why my hope and optimism was restored. He was very astute to have become "friends of all the little white boys whom... [he] converted into teachers" (Page 49). The way it worked was that he would bring them bread and in return they would "give [him] that more valuable bread of knowledge" (Page 49). 

Writhe: (verb) Make continual
twisting, squirming movements
or contortions of the body.

I was happy with how everything was going until I got to this very negative part: Douglass realizes how brutal and horrid slavery really was and how he wants to unlearn everything he already had. At the end of chapter seven he said, "As I writhed under it, I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing...It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but no ladder upon which to get out...I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity" (Page 51). In order for someone to envy slaves for "their stupidity", there must be something going on. For Frederick Douglass to finally understand how atrocious slavery was must have been such a big shock in his life. It's something that we can't truly understand because we have been raised at a different time period and with a certain perspective that has been cultivated in us since we were young. It's not that it's "normal" to us,  but it definitely isn't such a traumatizing news for us as it was for him. This discovery was incredibly nauseating and dreadful to Douglass, and it made me feel at a low curve. 

Then in chapter eight, Douglass talks about his grandmother - and certainly gives pathos a good use. That made me feel bad for him because he showed and convinced me that his grandmother, a caring woman, was born a slave and had to remain living in misery forever. He mentioned that "She was...a slave for life...in the hands of strangers; and in their hands she saw her children, her grandchildren, and her great-grandchildren, divided, like so many sheep, without being gratified with the small privilege of a single word, as to their or her own destiny" (Page 56). It's mournful to hear about someone with good intentions who is subdued to such a depressive life. 

Wharf: (noun) A level quayside area to which a ship
may be moored to load or unload.

For the rest of chapters eight and nine I felt like I was falling even more in the emotional roller coaster, but at the very end I finally reached an uplifting moment. After Douglass mentioned his grandmother and used pathos a lot to mention several dark things about slavery, he begins to depict his transition from the lightweight slavery life that he was living in Baltimore towards the heavyweight slavery life he had now been condemned to. He was sent to live with Thomas Auld, who was an "adopted slaveholder". According to Douglass, "he was cruel but cowardly" (Page 60) and he "gave [them] enough of neither coarse or fine food" (Page 59). Those things were hard on him since he had been living for seven years in Baltimore, where he was given decent food and his master wasn't as cruel as the new one. 

Pious: (adj.) Devoutly religious.

To finalize this long post, I have to mention the last part of my reading that felt uplifting to me. It was like I finally had the chance to breathe. At the end of chapter nine, Douglass is sent to Edward Covey's place for one year. This is what made me feel like the roller coaster began to lift up. He described him like this: "Added to the natural good qualities of Mr. Covey, he was a professor of religion - a pious soul - a member and a class-leader in the Methodist Church" (Page 63). I knew that his new master was a good man, and what really confirmed it, was at the end when Douglass said: "I was for sure getting enough to eat, which is not the smallest consideration to a hungry man" (Page 63). 

This was the wobbly emotional roller coaster that I experienced while reading chapters 7-9.