Douglass ’ Narrative : thinking, bonding, sympathy, style

1. Douglass’Narrative: thinking, bonding, sympathy, style

2. Enlightenment “man”: thinking and humanity, the animal and the human • The child wondering about his age: “a want of information concerning my own was a source of unhappiness to me even during childhood” (41): slaves like horses: thinking divides human and animal • Slave children eat like pigs at a trough • Horses treated better than slaves (Ch. III) • Mary of Baltimore, contending with pigs for the offal thrown into the street (65)

3. The slave as an animal • The result of reading: “I envied fellow-slaves for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a beast . . . the meanest reptile (68) – to get rid of thinking • As property like the animals: all together – horses and men, cattle and women, pigs and children” (71) – parallel structure • Broken by Covey: “behold a man transformed into a brute!” (83)

4. "Sale of Slaves at Charleston, South Carolina” Eyre Crow, 1853

5. Conditions for consciousness • The slave holiday: the cunning slaveholder gives “a dose of vicious dissipation, artfully labelled with the name of liberty” (91); “we had almost as well be slaves to man as to rum”; a system of “fraud and inhumanity” • Sabbath school: “Their minds had been starved by their cruel masters. They had been shut up in mental darkness” (95). • “[At Mr. Garnder’s] I was kept in such a perpetual whirl of excitement, I could think of nothing, scarcely, but my life; and in thinking of my life, I almost forgot my liberty” (106). • “to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. . . He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery . . . And he can be brought to that only when he ceases to be a man” (106) • Ch. XI, Master Thomas: “if I would be happy, I must lay out no plans for the future . . . setting aside my intellectual nature” (108)

6. Chapter VII, The Columbian Orator • Heard students reading from The Columbian Orator on the docks; bought a copy • Dialogue between master and slave • http://digital.library.pitt.edu/cgi-bin/t/text/text-idx?idno=00acf6728m;view=toc;c=nietz

7. Bonds of affection, affiliation • From the Declaration of Independence: “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” Reconsidering the apostrophe to the ships: Frederick as the solitary striver, as a thinker and planner, as one among others: “I am not the only slave in the world. Why should I fret? I can bear as much as any of them. Besides, I am but a boy, and all boys are bound to some one.” (84)

8. Forging Bonds • “those dear little fellows . . . on Philpot Street: they would express for me the liveliest sympathy” (67); it was toward “those little Baltimore boys that I felt the strongest attachment” (75) • Sabbath school: “teaching these my loved fellow-slaves how to read” (94) • “When I think that these precious souls are to-day shut up in the prison-house of slavery, my feelings overcome me . . . They had been shut up in mental darkness. I taught them, because it was the delight of my soul to be doing something that looked like bettering the condition of my race” (95). • “I loved them with a love stronger than anything I have experienced since” (95). • “We never moved separately. We were one” (95) • “It is my opinion that thousands would escape from slavery, who now remain, but for the strong cords of affection that bind them to their friends” (110).

9. “Literacy” as a dialogic project rather than a solitary achievement: Douglass’ analysis of and participation in publics (and counter publics) • Slave songs: “the “the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish” (51) • slaves suppressing the truth (54): “a still tongue makes a wise head” (maxim) • turning poor white boys into teachers (67), but also interlocutors – “I used to talk this matter of slavery over with them” – they created a public on the docks • F. – a ready listener: what is “abolition”?; newspaper article about petitions (69) • • writing as technical writing (70); copybooks • • back on the plantation: Mr. Wilson’s Sabbath school (78) • • Frederick teaching Sabbath school (94); teaching slaves at home (95)

10. Does the “Frederick” we encounter in the Narrative forge bonds of affection and affiliation with women? • A. Yes – with white women • B. Yes – with black women • C. Yes – with all women • D. No • E. It’s more complicated

11. A catalogue of people who helped “frederick” along the way • Harriet Bailey (mother), Betsy Bailey (grandmother) • Hugh and Sophia Auld • Boys on the dock; Irish dock workers • Mrs. Lucretia, who sent him back to Baltimore • Master Thomas, when he had been beaten by Covey • Sandy Jenkins • Mr. William Freeland • Henry Harris, John Harris, Henry Bailey, Charles Roberts • Captain Auld • William Gardner, ship-builder • Anna Murray, fiancé and then wife

12. Sympathy created through style “It would require sustained rhetorical effort, backed by the imagery of a richly humane and spontaneous poetry, to make us fully sympathize with people in circumstances greatly different from our own” Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives. Berkeley: U of California P, 1950.

13. Sympathy: crossing boundaries Slave songs: “”If anyone wishes to be impressed with the soul-killing effects of slavery, let him go . . . , place himself in the deep pine woods, and there let him, in silence, analyze the sounds that shall pass through the chambers of his soul” (51) His feelings after he reaches the North: “insecurity and loneliness” “to understand it, one must needs experience it, or imagine himself in similar circumstances. Let him be a fugitive slave . . . I say, let him place himself in my situation . . . I say, let him be placed in this most trying situation—then, and not till then, will he fully appreciate the hardships, of, and know how to sympathize with, the toil-worn and whip-scarred fugitive slave” (112).

14. Sympathy created through identification and division • Regarding Hugh Auld: “What he most dreaded, that most desired. What he most loved, that I most hated. . . . (64) – antithesis • “On the one hand, there stood slavery, a stern reality, glaring frightfully upon us,--its robes already crimsoned with the blood of millions, and even now feasting itself greedily upon our own flesh. On the other hand, away back in the dim distance, under the flickering light of the north star, behind some craggy hill or snow-covered mountain, stood a doubtful freedom—half frozen—beckoning us to come and share its hospitality” (96-97). -- personification

15. “Artful, cruel, and obdurate . . . “ • Mr. Gore: “He was just the man for such a place, and it was just the place for such a man” (55). -- chiasmus • Extended parallel structure: • “He was ambitious enough . . . • “He was cruel enough • . . . “artful enough . . .” • “and obdurate enough . . . “ (56)

16. The rhetorical power of evoking an imagined circumstance • Ch. XI: “I would keep the merciless slaveholder profoundly ignorant of the means of flight adopted by the slave. I would leave him to imagine himself surrounded by myriads of invisible tormentors . . . Let him feel his way in the dark; let darkness commensurate with his crime hover over him . . . Let us render the tyrant no aid; let us not hold the light by which he can trace the footprints of our flying brother” (107).

17. Sympathy and the sentimental style • “my poor old grandmother”: • “The hearth is desolate. . . . She stands—she sits—she staggers—she falls—she groans—she dies” (74). -- isocolon

18. Conclusions • Propaganda? In whose interest does Douglass argue? Is there space for multiple points of view? • Manipulation? Style in service of sympathy, toward what ends? • Ethos: excellence, good judgment, good will • Emphasis on story? Argument?

19. Breaking away, 1845-52 • Move to Rochester; founds the North Star (Chronology, p. 175) • Rejecting key elements of Garrison’s abolitionist philosophy and practice • “Enlightenment is man’s leaving his self-caused immaturity. Such immaturity is caused by lack of determination and courage to use one’s intelligence without being guided by another” (Kant, “What is Enlightenment?” 1784)

20. “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” • Occasional (epideictic)/abolitionist speech • Classical definition: praise/blame, present, consolidating communal values • Backgrounds: Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Fugitive Slave Act (1850): enforcement of Article 4, Section 2 of the United States Constitution, which required the return of runaway slaves

21. in Dialogue with the 1776 declaration • “The Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt* to the chain of your nation’s destiny” (152) • “Cling to it, and to its principles, with the grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight” (152). Where does Douglass forge bonds with his white audience? Where does he mark divisions? To what effect? *securing a boat to a dock (Wikipedia)