Freeing the Mind in Chains

But some books transcend their genre. This is one of those books.

Douglass’ narrative is more than a story of the escape from slavery. It stands as a metaphor for the liberation of the human mind.

Consider first Douglass Himself. Beginning in slavery in the American South, Douglass realizes the necessary mental state to exist in that condition:

I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is right; and he can be brought to that only when he ceases to be a man.

Akin to Dante beginning in the Dark Wood, Douglass begins in that thoughtless state. He is not a man. He has ceased to be a man and he is merely a thoughtless beast.

Then, Douglass learns to read. And when he learns to read, he learns to think. At this point, we want to rejoice that the thoughtless beast has become a thinking man. But, for Douglass, that transition is painful, very painful.

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. 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. Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me. There was no getting rid of it. It was pressed upon me by every object within sight or hearing, animate or inanimate.

Pause for a moment and ask: Why is this transition from thoughtlessness to thoughtfulness so painful? If you were given the choice between going through life as a thoughtless beast or as a thoughtful person, which would you prefer? That seems obvious. But, consider: when you become thoughtful, what will you think? You don’t know. So, why are you so certain you will be happier?

For Douglass, the thoughts turn to freedom. And that tortures him because he is not free.

In coming to a fixed determination to run away, we did more than Patrick Henry, when he resolved upon liberty or death. With us it was a doubtful liberty at most, and almost certain death if we failed. For my part, I should prefer death to hopeless bondage.

Patrick Henry thundered “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death.” That is one of those stirring phrases you hear in elementary school and you cheer. But, could you say that? Would you rather have death than a lack of liberty?

Hold that thought.

This is not just Douglass’ story. Think about the other side of the story.

My mistress was, as I have said, a kind and tender-hearted woman; and in the simplicity of her soul she commenced, when I first went to live with her, to treat me as she supposed one human being ought to treat another. In entering up on the duties of a slaveholder, she did not seem to perceive that I sustained to her the relation of a mere chattel, and that for her to treat me as a human being was not only wrong, but dangerously so. Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me 

Slavery proved as injurious to the slaveholders as to the slaves? Really? Do you believe that? It takes about two seconds of reflection to realize that the physical life of the slave is much worse than that of the slaveholder. So, why would Douglass make this seemingly absurd claim?

Douglass is not talking about physical conditions. He is concerned with the life of the mind. The slaves are thoughtless beasts. The slaveholders?

I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the south is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes,—a justifier of the most appalling barbarity,—a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds,—and a dark shelter under, which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of slaveholders find the strongest protection. Were I to be again reduced to the chains of slavery, next to that enslavement, I should regard being the slave of a religious master the greatest calamity that could befall me. For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others.

And there is the insight that is key to the whole narrative. The slave holders are every bit as much thoughtless beasts as the slaves they own. The slave owners think of themselves as educated and thoughtful and wise, but they are viciously trapped in a mindset that denies the humanity of the people around them, that brutalizes their fellow humans, that thinks it is praising God when it is torturing the image of God.

As Douglass realizes, the move from becoming a thoughtless slave to a thinking man is no different than the move from becoming the thoughtless slave-owner to a thinking person. Both journeys are hard.

And us? Oh sure, none of us are slaves or slave owners. But are our minds free? This is the question Douglass is asking the reader. It is the same question Thoreau asks;

I aspire to be acquainted with wiser men than this our Concord soil has produced, whose names are hardly known here. Or shall I hear the name of Plato and never read his book? As if Plato were my townsman and I never saw him — my next neighbor and I never heard him speak or attended to the wisdom of his words. But how actually is it? His Dialogues, which contain what was immortal in him, lie on the next shelf, and yet I never read them. We are underbred and low-lived and illiterate; and in this respect I confess I do not make any very broad distinction between the illiterateness of my townsman who cannot read at all and the illiterateness of him who has learned to read only what is for children and feeble intellects.

We often talk as if the ability to read is the same thing as the benefit of being able to read. But, it isn’t. Reading can liberate the mind, but only if we read deeply and widely. To do so, however is not natural for us. We, like the slaves and the slave-owners, have developed patterns of thought which ossify. We get stuck in mental ruts. And to break those ruts is terrifying.

What happens, for example, if your reading leads you to wonder if it really true that if you cannot have liberty, you would rather die? If you became convinced this was true, deeply convinced that this was true, would your life be different?

Douglass learned to read. But he did not learn the burden of slavery from reading an American abolitionist tract. He read a book of oratory and found an Irish argument for Catholic emancipation.

Imagine assigning a tract about Catholic emancipation to someone in an American high school, not as a historical work, but as a work which might bring meaning to a 21^st century high school student. The first question that would be asked, “How is this relevant to me? I am not an Irish Catholic living in 1795.” Since very few teachers would be able to give a decent answer to that question, very few teachers would ever think to assign it, or anything else remotely old and seemingly irrelevant. (The exceptions, the high school teachers who would have an answer, are the Great Teachers.)

It is not an opaque answer. It is the same reason you should read Douglass. It is the reason Douglass wrote his book. It is what he wants to convince you.

It is relevant because it has nothing to do with your immediate life. It is relevant because you are stuck in the rut of your life and reading this thing that seems totally irrelevant to you might just break you out of the mental slavery in which you find yourself, might just induce a thought different than you have ever had before, might just convince you to shake off your chains and be free.