The Impact of Language Upon the Life of Frederick Douglass

Ellis I. Lee

CML 222
Corbett
November 28, 1995
 The Impact of Language Upon the Life of Frederick Douglass

Of the countless individuals that have scurried across the face of the earth, many have

doubtlessly asked, “What is the meaning of life?” To acknowledge this question in the

affirmative that life has a meaning of some sort or another is to imply that life has a purpose; and

the relentless pursuit or fulfillment of this purpose will give rise to meaning which makes living

a sufferable experience. And of the billions of people who have posed this question, perhaps only

a handful of rare and remarkable characters have been able to strive for a purpose which not only

imparts to them a profound sense of personal meaning but which is also able to raise the

conscience and the standard by which humanity holds itself. To this end, such was the life of

Frederick Douglass. Born in 1818 in Maryland as a slave named Frederick Augustus Washington

Bailey, his entire sense of understanding was subdued by the treacherous nature of his

enslavement. Nevertheless, by a continual process of expanding and increasing his understanding

of and desire for freedom, the slave Frederick Bailey became the freeman Frederick Douglass

who struggled tirelessly as an abolitionist and as a civil rights activist. Thus, from the perspective

of Douglass’s process of being transformed from a “brute” as he had described himself to the

persuasively eloquent antithesis of slavery’s patrons, the observation of Wilbur H. Urban

becomes a poignant focus point from which to examine Douglass’s life: “In a very real sense the

limits of my vocabulary are the limits of my world.”

Although Urban makes a succinct statement with his observation, it might be of greater

pragmatic benefit if the term vocabulary were to be replaced by the term understanding. This

substitution is necessitated by the fact that although similar vocabulary had been used by both

the slave population and the white population, words would often have different connotative
meanings depending on which population used them. For example, Douglass begins his narrative

by describing his relationship to his mother, but the manner in which Douglass uses the word

mother seems only to suggest someone who has given birth to another without any regard to

there being a nurturing, loving relationship between the mother and child. Sadly, when Douglass

learned of his mother’s death, he reflected: “I received the tidings of her death with much the

same emotions I should have probably felt at the death of a stranger” (p. 728). This weakening of

family and interpersonal loyalties was, of course, one of the dehumanizing aspects of slavery.

Indeed, it was perhaps for this reason that Douglass was able to impassively describe the

senselessly brutal and malicious manner in which Master Andrew had beaten Douglass’s younger

brother (p. 749). To further illustrate this point of the limited utility of the term vocabulary in

Urban’s observation, Douglass commented on how fellow slaves would sing while walking

through the woods. Although singing was a common word for both the slaves and the whites, the

songs which the slaves sung in the woods were understood differently by some non-slaves. As

Douglass commented:

I have often been utterly astonished, since I came here to the north, to find
persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their
contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake.
Slaves sing most when they are unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the
sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is
relieved by its tears . . . The singing of a man cast away upon a desolate island
might be as appropriately considered as evidence of contentment and happiness,
as the singing of a slave; the songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the
same emotion. (p. 733-734)

Such discrepancies do not reside in the particular definition of the vocabulary but rather in how

the vocabulary is understood or interpreted by an individual; and by severely limiting the

understanding slaves had for themselves and for the world in which they lived, proponents of
slavery were able to effectively control the population of slaves.

Douglass described several manners in which whites were able to limit the understanding

slave had for themselves and for the world in which they lived. One such manner of keeping the

population of slaves in a continual state of ignorance involved denying the slaves knowledge of

rather rudimentary facts. In Douglass’s case, the facts denied to him included his age and

knowledge of who his father was, and this caused him a great deal of consternation even at an

early age. As Douglass explained:

A want of information concerning my own was a source of unhappiness to me

even during childhood. The white children could tell their age. I could not tell
why I ought to be deprived of the same privilege. I was not allowed to make any
inquiries of my master concerning it. He deemed all such inquiries on the part of a
slave improper and impertinent, and evidence of a restless spirit. (p. 727)

Furthermore, slaves were often times prohibited from accurately describing the conditions and

environment in which they lived; this, simply stated, meant that slaves could not express what

they believed to be the truth. When a slave, not knowing he was addressing his master Colonel

Lloyd, spoke unfavorably of how he was treated by being one of the Colonel’s slave, the slave

was sold to a Georgia slave trader a few weeks thereafter. As Douglass reflected, “this is the

penalty of telling the truth, of telling the simple truth, in answer to a series of plain question” (p.

735). This fear of speaking the truth, which resulted in a maxim for the slaves that “a still tongue

makes a wise head” (p. 736), was further exacerbated by the manner in which the slave-holders

attempted to limit the experiences of their slaves. By limiting the experiences of the slaves, the

slaves would have no knowledge of anything else but slavery and would thus have no basis from

experience to become discontent with their enslavement. Douglass thus explained the manner in

which he judged the quality of his treatment as a slave: “I always measured the kindness of my
master by the standard of kindness set up among slave-holders around us” (p. 736). In order for

Douglass to break the bondage slavery had imposed upon him, he had to surmount these

impediments that the slave culture had erected around him.

Thus, for Douglass, the path of achieving mental and physical emancipation from the

plight of slavery was unambiguous: He had to gain a greater comprehension and understanding

of words and their complex connotations by learning how to read; and by this action, he could

surpass the limited boundaries of slavery which had been the only world he had known to gain a

new affinity and appreciation of the heretofore unknown world of freedom. He arrived at this

conclusion by a rather serendipitous occurrence:

Very soon after I went to live with Mr. and Mrs. Auld, she very kindly
commenced to teach me the A, B, C. After I had learned this, she assisted me in
learning to spell words of three or four letters. Just at this point of my progress,
Mr. Auld found out what was going on, and at once forbade Mrs. Auld to instruct
me further, telling her, among other things, that it was unlawful, as well as unsafe,
to teach a slave to read. To use his own words, further, he said, “If you give a
nigger an inch, he will take an ell. 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. Now,” said he, “if you teach that nigger (speaking of myself) 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.” (p. 742)

From this admonishment of Mrs. Auld, Douglass learned the answer to a question which he had

struggled with since youth: “I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty

—to wit, the white man’s power to enslave the black man” (p. 743). Thus, from that moment,

Douglass endeavored to learn how to read proficiently. However, as noted before, it was not

enough that Douglass only learned of a word’s definition. Indeed, the real significance of

learning to read arose from the understanding of the word’s denotation and connotation so that it
may be fully utilized to expand one’s concept of understanding. For example, Douglass became

curious of the term abolition since it was often used in conjunction with slavery. As Douglass

explained:

...I set about learning what it meant. The dictionary afforded me little or no help. I
found it was “the act of abolishing;” but then I did not know what was to be
abolished. Here I was perplexed. I did not dare to ask any one about its meaning,
for I was satisfied that it was something they wanted me to know very little about.
After a patient waiting, I got one of our city papers, containing an account of the
number of petitions from the north, praying for the abolition of slavery in the
District of Columbia, and of the slave trade between the States. (p. 747)

And by understanding the connotative values of words, Douglass was able to generate thoughts

and ideas which were previously unknown to him, and this gave him the opportunity to expand

his understanding of himself, the world, and freedom. The perception which Douglass had

cultivated from understanding was able to influence his thoughts and behavior. For when

Douglass was at an anti-slavery convention at Nantucket, William Coffin asked him to speak

before an assembly of white people. Douglass acknowledged his reluctance at this prospect: “It

was a severe cross, and I took it up reluctantly. The truth was, I felt myself a slave, and the idea

of speaking to white people weighed me down. I spoke but a few moments, when I felt a degree

of freedom, and said what I desired with considerable ease” (p. 784).

Douglass’s life was perhaps most profoundly influenced by his desire to read and learn.

By being able to manipulate the subtle meanings found in language, Douglass was able to

construct for himself a better understanding of the inequities he found in his life as a slave as

well as a means of being able to expand his understanding to go beyond the limiting boundaries

of slavery to contemplate a world in which he could be free and equal to other men. By learning

to read, Douglass also undertook a definitive step in being able to reason and think beyond the
scope of his current environment. And by broadening his capacity to think and reason, Douglass

was able to escape the mental and physical imprisonment of slavery. To this end, Urban’s

observation that “the limits of my vocabulary are the limits of my world” would be an accurate

account of the manner in which Douglass’s transformation from a “brute” to an influential

human being occurred.