Final Discussion Questions
- Why did Douglass stand up to Mr. Covey?
- What are the various methods that slaveholders use in order to keep slaves submissive? What kind of commentary does Douglass make about these methods? Which of them, for instance, seems the most insidious to him? Why?
- Douglass maintains that slavery dehumanized both the slave and slaveholder. Citing specific passages in the Narrative support this thesis with examples.
- How does Douglass connect violence and power in his narrative (either as a means for oppression, like with Aunt Hester in Chapter I, or as a means for self-empowerment, like with Covey in Chapter X)?
- Douglass learned to read and write as a slave. Did this help him find his freedom? Why? Why not?
- What does it take for a slave to become free? What does freedom mean? Is it more than just being legally free?
- What lessons does Douglass's life have for readers who aren't slaves? What can we learn from his story?
- What "American" values or ethics does Douglass seem to embrace or reject?
- In what way could you say that Frederick Douglass didn't make arguments, he himself was the argument?
- Why would the idea of Douglass, now a writer/speaker living in the north, scare southern slave owning culture?
- Do you see Douglass as a radical or not? In this text? In his life's accomplishment? Hidden Text: (Author and historian James Oakes told NBC News, "He was advocating an active government role for equal rights from the moment emancipation was clearly accomplished." So, yes, he was.)
- At the dedication of a school for colored youth in 1894 Douglass said, "To deny education to any people is one of the greatest crimes against human nature." What are the assumptions that underly this statement?
- Finally, this is from an article in the newspaper, The Nation. What are your reactions to the commentary by writer. historian Matt Karp?
The power of the antebellum slaveholding class, after all, resided not only in its direct domination of black slaves, but in its ability to divide and exploit an even larger multiracial working class. Douglass knew how well this system worked from bitter personal experience: As a hired slave in Baltimore, he was assaulted by white dockworkers with bricks and handspikes. Yet he remained clearheaded about who benefited from this racial violence. As he wrote in 1855: “The slaveholders, with a craftiness peculiar to themselves, by encouraging the enmity of the poor, laboring white man against the blacks, succeeds in making the said white man almost as much a slave as the black slave himself…. Both are plundered, and by the same plunderers.”
Extension: How does Douglass revisit the mythology of Ben Franklin and the "self-made man"? How does Douglass go about making himself in the narrative? To what extent does he embody Emersonian self-reliance?