In another story, Douglass’s Narrative shows us the road from slavery to freedom. At the beginning of the book, Douglass is a slave in both body and mind. When the book ends, he gets both his legal freedom as well as his mental one. He constantly has moments of insights or “epiphanies” that allow him to dissolve what is going on around him and how he can act on it. These events are turning points in Douglass’s life, but they also help show how he got there, and what he had to learn along the way. The first epiphany is Douglass’s realization about what slavery is. He sees his Aunt Hester always get beaten and since he was so young it was hard for him to understand what was going on. So his first turning point is sort of basic, but also important: realizing that he is a slave and all that, that entails. Baltimore was a whole new world for him, with a lot of new experiences, but the most important thing was that he was able to understand the power of education. He has this second epiphany when his master’s wife started teaching him how to read. Douglass finds ways to continue educating himself, but the real lesson is that slavery exists not because the masters are better than their slaves, but because they keep their slaves ignorant. His third epiphany happens, however, when he decides that he’d rather die than be treated like a slave anymore. But even after he’s free, he discovers that his journey isn’t over. This is his final epiphany: even after he acquires his own freedom, he realizes he can’t rest until all slavery is abolished. He not only becomes an abolitionist activist himself; he writes the narrative of his life to teach others, both whites and blacks alike, how to follow in his footsteps.