While Douglass' relation to slave songs and his encounter with the white carpenters stand as important moments in his Narrative, they do not necessarily directly bear on his desire for and realization of freedom in the same way that his encounter with Covey does. Another incident in his autobiography that fuels his desire for freedom is his learning to read. After reading "a book entitled 'The Columbian Orator," Douglass thinks perpetually of freedom.
Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever. It was heard in every sound, and seen in every thing. It was ever present to torment me with a sense of my wretched condition. I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling it. It looked from every star, it smiled in every calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm.
While this encounter with the printed...
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text leads to an abstract desire for freedom, his epiphany andsoliloquy at Baltimore harbor make this concrete. Gazing at ships moving freely across the water, he sentimentally proclaims,
You are loosed from your moorings, and are free; I am fast in my chains, and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly before the bloody whip! You are freedom's swift-winged angels, that fly round the world; I am confined in bands of iron! O that I were free! O, that I were on one of your gallant decks, and under your protecting wing! Alas! betwixt me and you, the turbid waters roll. Go on, go on. O that I could also go! Could I but swim! If I could fly! O, why was I born a man, of whom to make a brute! The glad ship is gone; she hides in the dim distance. I am left in the hottest hell of unending slavery. O God, save me! God, deliver me! Let me be free! Is there any God? Why am I a slave? I will run away. I will not stand it. Get caught, or get clear, I'll try it. I had as well die with ague as the fever. I have only one life to lose. I had as well be killed running as die standing.
As with his reading, this meditation on the stark contrast between his bondage and the ships' freedom leads him to seek freedom for himself, eventually culminating in his escape from slavery.
While many events happen in Frederick Douglass' Narrative of the Life, three of them stand out as formative events both biographically and rhetorically. First, he recounts how his relationship to slave songs both distanced him and brought him closer to the slave community in which he was born:
they would sing, as a chorus, to words which to many would seem unmeaning jargon, but which, nevertheless, were full of meaning to themselves. I have sometimes thought that the mere hearing of those songs would do more to impress some minds with the horrible character of slavery, than the reading of whole volumes of philosophy on the subject could do.
After this introduction to Douglass' life as a slave, he tells of his fight with his cruel "slavebreaker" master Mr. Covey in which he realized his own humanity. After being threatened with beating, Douglass
resolved to fight; and suiting my action to the resolution, I seized Covey hard by the throat; and as I did so, I rose. He held on to me, and I to him.... I seized him with both hands by his collar, and brought him by a sudden snatch to the ground....
This encounter makes Douglass resolve to be free and escape his slavery. Finally, after escaping--which he does not narrate--he encounters racism from white working men while trying to find work at the shipyard in Baltimore:
Many of the black carpenters were freemen. Things seemed to be going on very well. All at once, the white carpenters knocked off, and said they would not work with free colored workmen. Their reason for this, as alleged, was, that if free colored carpenters were encouraged, they would soon take the trade into their own hands, and poor white men would be thrown out of employment.
These three events demonstrate slave ideology, self-determined manumission, and white racism against freed slaves respectively and stand as crucial turning points in Douglass' Narrative.
In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, what key events influenced his quest for freedom?
Many events shaped Frederick Douglass's life. One of the most important was when he was sent to Baltimore, where his slave mistress, Mrs. Auld, began to teach him to read. He writes, "Going to live at Baltimore laid the foundation, and opened the gateway, to all my subsequent prosperity" (page 18 in the Dover edition). Learning to read was vital to his eventual escape, as literacy enabled him to read the arguments against slavery (though he already understood the injustices of slavery from his personal experience) and gave him the confidence necessary to dare to escape.
Another important event was when Douglass's fellow slave, Sandy, gave him a root that he said would prevent the overseer, Mr. Covey, from brutalizing him. Douglass writes, "there was something in the root which Sandy had given me" (page 42). This root provided Douglass with the courage to fight against his oppressor and also increased his courage and desire to escape from slavery. Another important event was when Douglass's master hired him out to a shipbuilder in Baltimore (page 55). This experience provided Douglass with skills so that he knew he would be able to support himself when he escaped northward.