Essay
Oppression Through the Eyes of Douglass and Plath
- Instelling
- Universiteit Utrecht (UU)
Grade: 8.3 An essay in which two texts are compared on the subject of oppression
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Oppression Through the Eyes of Douglass and PlathAriel by Sylvia Plath and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass
were written in a time over a hundred years apart, both texts were set in their contemporary
time. The authors were both dealing with very different circumstances compared to the
other’s circumstances. This means that the setting of the texts is different: Narrative of the
Life of Frederick Douglass is set in the nineteenth century and focuses on slavery and the
fight for freedom, while the texts of Ariel are set in the twentieth century and focus on
dealing with mental health issues. Another difference between the texts is the format in which
they were written: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is prose, while Ariel consists
of poems. Despite these major differences, the texts show many similarities. Both Narrative
of the Life of Frederick Douglass as well as Ariel are written in an autobiographical manner,
referring to personal experiences of the authors, such as the death of a parent: Plath describes
the death of a father, while Douglass describes the death of his mother. Furthermore, the texts
show similarities with respect to themes, such as trauma and oppression. This essay will
focus on uncovering the notions of discrimination and misogyny through analyzing the
autobiographical depiction of oppression in Sylvia Plath’s ‘Daddy’ from Ariel as well as
Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.
In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Douglass outlines the strategies that
white people used to gain control over black people from the moment they were born as
slaves, and to keep the slaves under control when they got older. One example Douglass uses
that gives the reader evidence of these strategies is the secrecy of basic facts such as the birth
date and paternity of the slaves that the slaveholders withheld from the slaves. In the first
chapter of his autobiography Douglass states that he does not have any “accurate knowledge
of [his] age” (1). Slaves seldom know their birthday and often cannot identify it much closer
than around a specific season or holiday, resulting in an inability to tell how old they are. By
, keeping these basic facts a secret, the slaveholders rob their slaves of their sense of individual
identity. Douglass goes on to show the reader many aspects of the oppression of slaves, such
as the separation of mother and child, that also happened to himself at a very young age:
“[m]y mother and I were separated when I was but an infant – before I knew her as my
mother” (2). In his autobiography, he states that this happened to many children of young
slaves: “[i]t is a common custom […] to part children from their mothers at a very early age”
(2). Besides the secrecy of basic facts and the separation of mother and child, slaves were
also kept ignorant and illiterate. The slaveholders prohibited them to learn how to read and
write, or educate themselves in any other way. By doing this, the slaveholders made it hard
for the slaves to realize that their situation was not a normal state of being and tricked them
into believing that this was all that they could ever be. The goal behind this was “to obliterate
the possibility of moral or religious consciousness that enables the oppressed to oppose their
oppressors” (Jorgenson 6). This is substantiated by what Mr. Auld told his wife when he
discovered that she tried to teach Douglass how to read and write: [i]t would forever unfit
him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master”
(29). Keeping slaves illiterate also meant that Southern slaveholders had a way to maintain
control over the quantity and the nature of the information that was spread by slaves towards
the rest of America: their inability to write, made sure that the slaves could not tell their story
and spread it widely across America. This way, the slaveholders managed to keep a tight grip
on the slaves and their ability to transfer their knowledge, even after they had reached
freedom. In the case of Douglass, the slaveholder failed to keep his slave from learning how
to read and write, because his wife had already started teaching him the basics that were
necessary to learn how to read and write. Douglass says about this: “[i]n learning to read, I
owe almost as much to the bitter opposition of my master, as to the kindly aid of my mistress.
I acknowledge the benefit of both” (30). The benefit of the mistress was that she had taught
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