Jarh L. Rodriguez’s Reviews > Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglas > Status Update

[of reaching the free states]

Among fellow-men yet feeling as if in the midst of wild beasts, whose greediness to swallow up the trembling and half-famished fugitive is only equalled by that with which the monsters of the deep swallow up the helpless fish upon which they subsist

“O why was I born a man of whom to make a brute!”

[same as Mandela saw the effects of appartheid on the opressors]
I saw more clearly than ever the brutalizing effects of slavery upon both slave and slaveholder

[the dangers of dehumanization]
We were all ranked together at the evaluation. Men and women, old and young, married and single, were ranked with horses, sheep, and swine. There were horses and men, cattle and women, pigs and children, all holding the same rank in the scale of being and were all subjected to the same narrow examination

In moments of agony I envied my fellow slaves for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own, anything, no matter what, to get rid of thinking. It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me.

I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition without the remedy. It opened my eyes to the horrible pit but to no ladder upon which to get out.

The more I read the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers who had left their homes and gone to Africa and stolen us from our homes in a strange land, reduced us to slavery. I loathed them as being the meanest as well as the most wicked of men

These words sank deep into my heart. It was a new and special revelation explaining dark and mysterious things with which my youthful understanding had struggled but struggled in vain. I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty - to wit, the white man's power to enslave the black man. It was a grand achievement. From that moment I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom

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. If you teach that nigger 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

[Of fabricated relative status as perceived value]

Few privileges were esteemed higher by the slaves of the out farms than that of being selected to do errands at the Great House Farm. It was associated in their minds with greatness