Frederick Douglass

Summary

The passage I chose to analyze is found near the end of chapter 2. It is part of the monolauge of sorts that Douglass gives about how the slaves sing. It goes as follows: “I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meaning of those rude and apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle; so that I neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear. They told a tale of woe which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension; they were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and complaint of souyls boiling over with bittering anguish” In this paragraph he further explains comparing the tones of the song to a “testimony” against slavery. He discusses how to the outsider, the slaves singing was a sign of their happiness when in fact it was the opposite. In the last paragraph he says the he found people who thought slaves were singing as evidence of their happiness and conentment when it was quite the opposite. He compares it to a man singing on a castaway island. I think Douglass could not draw this conclusion when he was “in the circle” because those mundane tasks seemed arbitrary and did not require further analysis and deeper thinking. However once he is removed from his past self he is able to realize the deeper meaning. I think this passage was particularly important because it is integral to the readers’ understanding of why they sang these songs while on the plantation. It also is important because it exhibits how painful it was for douglass to reflect on this chapter in his life, even stating that while writing it, “an expression of feeling has already found its way down my cheek.”