Can It Get More Obvious?: Two Thoughts, One Entry

There's two reasons to why I am writing this blog post. The first one is because I finished Douglass's Narrative. The second, because I have to disagree to somethings I saw around the AP Lang Blogger world.

So I'll begin with my thoughts on the ending. As I virtually "turned" the last page of the narrative, I felt SO many different things. Fist of all, kudos to Douglass for his success in escaping the slave world. I feel that he very much deserved the freeman life considering the fact that he really fought for his freedom throughout his slave life.

Secondly, kudos to Douglass for getting married. It made me so much happier to know that not only was he free now, but that he also found love. The marriage ceremony was a cute part, very quick and simple but still cute.

Thirdly, I felt disappointed that he didn't share the exact details on how he attained liberty. I know, he couldn't just give out the secret recipe for all the freedom-hungry slaves, but I definitely wanted to visualize what exactly was it that made him get there at that last moment. It's something about me that's very annoying: I always want to know every detail about everything. However, I have to respect Douglass decision of keeping it a secret. Just a personal conflict of mine towards the end of the memoir.

FInally, I felt proud. Throughout the whole book, Douglass implements a lot of pathos, which just makes me have sympathy for him and connect to his ideas. So it's like I met Douglass back when he began narrating his story and I could see and visually experience his change, progress, and triumph. For example, I felt so proud of him when he said, "I found employment, the third day after my arrival, in stowing a sloop with a load of oil" (Page 105).
And then at the end, I thought it was very convenient that he joined the anti-slavery meetings and that he read the "Liberator" simply because he had an advantage over all of the white men: slavery had been something tangible to him. Of course he "never felt happier than when in an anti-slavery meeting" (Page 106). Those simply set his soul on fire.

I want to compare Douglass's new experience of being free to Dorothy's landing at Munchkin Land. Too exaggerated, I know, but the point is that Douglass felt in a completely new world just like Dorothy did. For example in this quote he notices a difference between his old home and his new one: "The people looked more able, stronger, healthier, and happier than those of Maryland" (Page 104).

Now, regarding something I mentioned in my last blog post, I said I was finally happy and relieved that Douglass had been moved to live with Mr. Covey for a year. After reading chapter 10, I definitely changed my mind because Douglass shows us that Covey was the worst master he ever had: "Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me. I was broken in body, soul, and spirit...my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died...behold a man transformed into a brute!" (Page 67). My actual relief began after Master Hughes kept Douglass for himself. Master Douglass was a very nice person and he definitely contributed towards Douglass's path towards freedom.

For the second part of this post, I will now begin to contradict one of my classmates.

A while ago, I saw Cristina Soto's latest post and I didn't quite agree with the point she made. She said that Douglass began to show a more egocentric side of him that he hadn't shown before. I don't think it makes him egocentric to say that "[he] had know what it was to be kindly treated; they had known nothing of the kind" (Page 55). I think he didn't say that to proof that he is "on top of the world" or to show off, he simply has had much more experience with different masters at different plantations and he had some who treated him nicely (Ms. Auld for example, who taught him how to read). So it does make sense to say that he had known what it felt like to be treated nicely because he'd experienced it and maybe the other slaves had been treated inhumanely throughout their lives and haven't experienced what Douglass did.

Cristina mentions that "[she] doesn't believe this makes it okay for Douglass to feel powerful over the others". As a matter of fact, I do believe Douglass had a higher advantage than all the other slaves - I mean he could read and stuff - but it's not that he's better than the rest. He just had more experience and skill, therefore he can have the liberty to believe that he's had better experiences than the rest.