Compare And Contrast The Character Of Mr. Auld In Frederick Douglass

According to Douglas, what is at the core of a white man’s ability to enslave a black man is the fact that white men are educated but the majority of blacks weren’t. So teaching blacks will “spoil” them and make them “forever unfit to be a slave,” becoming “unmanageable, and of no value to his master.”

Mr. Auld is portrayed in a very negative way, which is a stark contrast to the positive way Mrs. Auld was portrayed. Mrs. Auld teaches Frederick Douglas the alphabet, then after he learned that, she went on to teaching him how to spell short words. However, Mr. Auld stops these lessons from continuing as soon as he discovers they’re happening, which was right when he was learning how to spell shorter words. He “forbade” Mrs. Auld to instruct

Auld and Mrs. Auld appear to be stark opposites from the way they’re portrayed by Douglas in his Narrative. The portrayal that elicits greater sympathy is the portrayal of Mrs. Auld. She’s incredibly kind and generous, as seen through her willingness to teach Douglas and attitude in how she treated him. It was illegal at the time to teach slaves, and yet she did so anyway. It’s clear she didn’t see Douglas as inferior because he was black but as an equal. However, Mr. Auld on the other hand was clearly very racist and rude, as he constantly uses the n word to refer to blacks, tries to give reasons to support why slaves shouldn’t be educated, and evidently sees them as inferior and less

In fact, Douglas was one of the most famous intellectuals during the time as he advised presidents, led lectures; wrote several autobiographies that were so great Northerners found it hard to believe he had previously been a slave, became bestsellers, and was influential in promoting and spreading the idea of abolition. He was also a national leader of the abolitionist movement. He was so famous because of his great autobiographies, being one of the first to offer and show a firsthand experience of a slave in such a way that the majority of Americans could access it. He was also so influential yet he was black. Because he was educated, he was given more respect, which in turn gave him more power in the abolitionist movement, and he was more influential as well. Since he was so different from how other blacks were at the time, he was a lot more well known than the others. His vision of abolition differed from others’ views of abolition in that his way of promoting the idea and movement was to aim at the hearts and minds of readers of his autobiographies. His books are served a purpose to attack the use of slaves and contribute to the promotion of abolishing slavery and argued to fully include black Americans into the nation. Rather than just calling for the abolition of slavery, he fought for more, attacking slavery and calling for the full inclusion of blacks