Journal #14

Michelle Romero
English 48A
Dr. Scott Lankford

Author: Frederick Douglass

"I now understood what had been to me the 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" (2086).

Douglass makes this realization after one of his slave-owners, Mr. Auld, snatches away a newspaper he was trying to read. It was acts like these that brought Douglass to his conclusion, that reading, that education must be the answer.

Douglass was great at observing things. To come to the conclusion he comes to in this passage, he observed how threatened Mr. Auld seemed to be by his reading. Using his common sense, Douglass then began to think that reading must be something to make him less of a slave and more like a man.

I find it so powerful that reading had that much power. I also find it quite revealing of the white man's thinking. White slave-owners seemed to hide behind the idea that slaves were property and not men. However, property can't read, so why would Mr. Auld think that Douglass was actually reading and not just trying to be silly or entertain him. The fact that Mr. Auld does not, intuitively, that Douglass would begin seeing the world differently by reading, shows that he does know Douglass is a man and would react in the same was as any other man by gaining knowledge.

I once read a quote from someone that said "Only the educated are free..." and I wonder if that is really true. It seems odd to think that reading would either free or enslave a person. I suppose, this ability on the other hand, does separate us from other animals.

Therefore, by taking away the ability or privilege to read from Douglass, the white man is making him more of an animal. Ironically, white man thought that blacks were animals, savages, but Douglass suggests that white man was making black men in to animals without the abilities to distinguish themselves as men.