“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.”
Frederick Douglass had a way with words, an amazing feat considering the fact that he was born an African American slave in the American colonies, people not traditionally taught to read and write. As a result, not only did Douglass have to buy his own freedom in order to achieve this but he also had to teach himself to read and write once that freedom was bought. Once he had bought his freedom and learned how to read and write, Douglass finally had the tools needed to eternalize the struggle so many slaves could not as the vast majority of them were, in fact, illiterate. Douglass could now put the “songs of the slave represent[ative] of his heart” onto paper for all to read, marking one of the first firsthand explanations of the true sorrows of a slave. Douglass spoke from experience when he said that a slave is relieved by his song “only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears”. This metaphor asserts that a slave only sings in order to let go of some of their pain and sorrow, not in what appears to be a showing of enthusiastic joy at having been chosen to complete one of the most revered jobs on the plantation. Douglass states that he didn’t understand the meaning of those songs when he was a slave because he could not comprehend his woes while in their throes, but couldn’t he, as well as other slaves, have seen that their treatment and lives were absolutely horrible? I feel as if I would have noted that the clothes given to me were more than less than sustainable for a whole year if I had been a slave. Were the slaves simply choosing to be ignorant in the face of their oppressors or did they really not notice how much better their life could be?
