The Power of Slave Narratives Essay -- Analysis, Fredrick Douglass

The Power of Slave Narratives The influence of Fredrick Douglass and his get by for emancipation will always be a source of eagerness. Douglass history, as articulated in The Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, has a remained an influential fragment on those seeking liberation from oppression and has maintained a discernible position in African-American popular culture. Douglass demonstrates the availability of counter hegemonic ideologies provided too provides a guide to achieving corporeal and racial agency. For Douglass, one thoroughfare of liberation was reading. While a close reading of his narrative also suggests music was a fundamental component of his circumstances. A source of inspiration for this paper is Douglass retelling of learning his ABCs. Douglass recalls the moment when Mr. Auld scolds his wife, Mrs. Auld, for teaching Douglass. The reason why Douglass should not be educated is harrowing, If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell. A nig ger should know nothing unless to obey his master--to do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the outmatch nigger in the world (Douglass 45). Consequently, this assertion of spoiling is caused by reading and literacy. Education gives Douglass the tools to question his existence resulting in a realization of oppression. thereof with the ability to read and write, he could escape by both literally and figuratively writing his own pass to freedom. From here Douglass realizes that the ...pathway from slavery to freedom... was via teaching and that ...the argument which Mr. Auld so warmly waged, against my learning to read, only seemed to inspire me with a desire and determination to learn.. (Douglass 46). Passion and perseverance force Douglass to exchange ... ... formulateThe recuperation of power and corporeal, spiritual, and racial agency circumvents neighborly and political modes of oppression. much scholars point towards the power of the word or Nommo as a room to communicate power and penetrate subjugation. Halifu Osumare in The Africanist Aesthetic and Global whang critically examines Nommo as an avenue toward emancipation. As Osumare argues, allows us to try on our possible identities because it exists, at least during the performance, outside the realities of power, and therefore provides a shortened foray into a realm of the possible beyond establish social boundaries (Osumare 83). Through Nommo, a type of emancipation manifested even if the body was up to now held in bondage. Once the word was sung, and the sound traveled between ear, mind, and mouth, no slave owner could own and control the power of the word.