Education the Revolutionist

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difficult scene to watch is as Solomon is forced at gunpoint to beat Patsy with a whip until she nearly is dead. The audience hears the sound of the whip, and sees the flesh being torn from her back. Being born free Solomon does not just cringe at the cruelty around him; he is infuriated at the injustices being inflicted. He knows that these things are wrong and is angered because he knows what it is like to be free. Once your eyes have been opened they can never be shut again.

Fredrick Douglass sits in the middle of the spectrum with Sarah Fitzpatrick on one end, and Solomon Northup on the other. Douglass was born a slave, but lacking ignorance he educated himself, and escaped slavery. At a young age Douglass realizes whites kept control over their black slaves by keeping them uneducated; by keeping their eyes closed. "If you teach that nigger how to read, there would be no keeping him…He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master” (Douglass 6.3). Douglass understands that this is how whites maintain power over their slaves, and this awareness allows him to see more than one angle to every situation. Unlike Sarah Fitzpatrick, whom the idea of a life other than one as a slave had never occurred to her, Douglass escapes slavery and helps educate other black slaves around him.

Whereas all three stories help us understand antebellum slavery, Douglass’s novel does more than tell of the cruelties inflicted upon him slaves; it explains how whites kept their slaves from fighting back. The abolishment of slavery began with those who did not just go along with things, and dared to stop and ask why. People who thought like Fredrick Douglass and educated those around them are the people who helped abolish slavery.