Mr. Auld when he finds out his wife was teaching Frederick Douglass:
“if you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell.” “A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master-to do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world. Now”, said he, “if you teach that nigger(speaking of myself) how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master. As to himself, it could do him no good, but a great deal of harm. It would make him discontented and unhappy.”
Mr. Auld was about half right when stating that Frederick Douglass would become unmanageable and that reading would make him feel unhappy. I believe that Douglass would prefer this kind of unhappiness then of the life he had before when he was in the plantation. Douglass states, “From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom.” This incident left such a strong impression on Douglass that Mr. Auld was hinting at something important, it was a clue for him to have hope, and to follow his ambition of learning how to read. It was from this moment that Douglass realized that being literate could be the key to unlocking his chains of slavery and towards a path of freedom. Mr. Auld didn’t realize that when he was saying all of these things to his wife Mrs. Auld and condemning her for educating Douglass, only inspired Douglass even more to go and pursue it. It is sort of like when you teach a Christian or Catholic girl to abstain from sex until marriage, it might incite her to rebel against this tradition and she will actually do the reverse. This conversation with Mr. Auld and his wife was sort of like an accidentally reversed psychology that opened the eyes of Douglass. In other words, it was an awakening because from that moment on Frederick Douglass was inspired to learn. In taking in the statement that the best slave would be spoiled if he started learning, Douglass knew that this was something he must do to go against Mr Auld’s beliefs.
At times I find myself pondering on this question what is freedom? And how does reading influence one’s mind? It’s clear that reading is an exercise of the mind, for one is inputting information into the mind, in the same way a programmer inputs codes into a computer to tell it what to do or teach it what to do. Reading allows people to learn new things and this could inspire or spark up new ideas. Reading makes one conscious and socially aware and able to put these words into action or writing for one’s own benefit.
I can go back and remember the book by Paulo Coelho, “The Alchemist” in that it was like a key that unlocked my consciousness, it woke me up to be aware of things that I paid little attention towards to. Frederick Douglass was not only born into the world (just as an ordinary person would be born) but he was also born as a slave because of American society’s common sense. In the same way, people are born into the world, not by “choice,” and are “trapped” until death. Douglass’s situation was worse because he was a slave on earth and was considered a slave by society’s standards, as he was owned by another person. Being educated allowed Douglass to free his mind, no longer was he a prisoner of his own mind because he broke the chains of ignorance.
Having listened to many great people, reading more currently, and revisiting Douglass’ Narrative, I have learned to not fall into the traps of other people’s opinions or their truths, but respect their beliefs as well as their opinions, and call them out on their faults. One has to make up their own minds, and make up their own conclusions instead of taking someone else’s word for it. It is the reason why I don’t subscribe to any particular ideology but my own philosophy of the pursuit of truth. Just because society says its common sense may not always be common sense (as in the case of slavery), just because someone else says it’s right, or true may not be so, (hence the reason for debates and the scientific method). I’ve come to the conclusion that the ability to think for yourself is the ultimate freedom.
Mrs. Auld gave Frederick Douglass metaphorically an inch by teaching him the alphabet which is a part of language that is a part of understanding and comprehension. It was too late for her to go back from her actions because nothing was going to stop Douglass from taking the ell– a former English unit of length(as for cloth) equal to 45 inches. It is a fact that education and slavery are incompatible with each other. An educated slave or an educated person, may find out and know that slavery is wrong and would most likely do everything in their power to find a way out of slavery or abolish it. If ignorance is bliss, then the truth can be painful yet liberating. In other words, the truth hurts but cures. Douglass found out the truth of his people and of his own conditions of being a slave and that it was unjustifiable. Through that realization, the truth was painful. Had he remained illiterate, ignorant, or a brute, it would have spared him of the mental and emotional pain. Nevertheless, writing his narrative is one of the remedies to alleviate his pain, and to cure the disease that plagued the social fabric in American history of the inhumane and abominable act of slavery.
Social Scholarly 