The Madness of the Past

Douglass begins his narrative by telling us where he is from and mentioning that he has "no accurate knowledge of [my] age, never having seen any authentic records containing it" (Page 17). I was not expecting him to begin like this, i thought he would begin by telling us who he was now and then going back. I was very surprised, not only by the way he began, but also by what he said. I knew that slaves were treated horribly, but since they were sold and bought, I would've thought that at least someone had a record of when they were born, to 'keep track' of how many slaves there were, who they were sold to and so on. Another thing that shocked me in this chapter was when he spoke about his mother and said "death soon ended what little we could have while she lived and with it her hardships and suffering" (Page 18). He talks about her death being both a good and a bad thing. It was good because it 'ended her hardships and suffering', however it was also bad because the small moments that he got to spend with her were now gone. I feel like I can relate, even if what I went through cannot compare to this. When I was young I lost a cousin of mine, he didn't live in Bogota so I rarely got to see him, but when I did I had a lot of fun. He had been suffering from heart cancer for a long time, and had undergone 8 surgeries. He was in pain and exhausted. When he finally passed I was relieved because he would not have to go through anything like that again, and he could finally rest. However I did love him dearly, and was extremely sad that he had to die for his pain to end. Obviously this does not compare because everything in both situations is different, I was mostly shocked because in my situation it was something that just happened, he got sick, and nothing could be done. I am sure that with his mother many factors contributed to her illness. For starters the fact that she had to walk and work so much, and got barely any rest. Also the amount of food she was given, the clothes and many other things. If things would've been different she could've probably lived much longer.

"Slaves sing most when they are most 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." (Page 28). Douglass says that the white men said that the slaves sung because they were happy, and he explains that clearly, that was not the case. I completely understa
nd the slaves. I love singing and music, and I find that when I'm sad, angry or stressed, singing helps me. I sometimes sing to express what I am feeling, other times I do so to forget about my problems, and I can see that the slaves were doing so as well. Something I wonder at times is whether the white men were dumb and foolish, or if they were just using the excuse of the slaves 'singing because they were happy' to justify the way they were treating them and dull the feeling of guilt they knew they should have for treating them like animals. I also ask myself how they could treat anyone like that, and take pleasure in it. I am aware that in that time, slaves were considered  extremely inferior, like animals,  and thus treated 'appropiately' for what they were believed to be. Still I would never be able to treat anyone like that, not an animal and certainly not a person. I am aware that because of the time period, the beliefs and everything else these men were probably neither foolish, nor sociopathic, but I still cannot wrap my head around the fact that people could be so cruel.

I've read a couple articles about slavery, and watched a few movies as well, so I was not really stunned about the general way in which slaves were treated. I knew that they had to work long hours, that they were sold and bought, I knew that they were usually given few clothes, that they were not given a lot of food and that they were beaten when they did something wrong. Still knowing that these things are done to all of them is not as impacting as reading about one persons story. Douglass mentions a man called Demby and how once when he was being whipped he ran away and hid, me tells us that the overseer said he would shoot him if he did not come out before he got the chance to call his name three times. After the third call he hadn't come out yet, so he shot him. "His mangled body sank out of sight, and blood and brains marked the water where he had stood" (Page 36). The astonishment that I felt by this personal story is just like the one I felt when I went to the Holocaust Museum and got an ID card that told the story of one of the victims. "My mother was sent to Germany for forced labor; I was left to care for my 6-year-old sister." -Stefania Podgorska. It was much more striking to hear a single persons experience, than to hear about the events in general terms.

I wonder what will happen in his new home. How will he be treated? Is he going to be 'happy'? Are there going to be other slaves? What kind of work is he going to do?