Analysis Of Frederick Douglass 'The Quest Of The Silver Fence'

Both of their educational backgrounds show that Blacks who have grown up in white environments tend to be exposed to more opportunities to learn. Like Frederick Douglass his Mistress Sophia Auld taught him the beginnings of how to read. He remembered his master’s words in rebuking his wife for teaching him. If he was not introduced to the alphabet, a privilege of the white man, in his time he would not have had to will to learn to read. Frederick Douglass realized first what was expected from him as a slave and then what the whites had access to. Even as a boy he had double consciousness and took advantage of it (Three African American Classics: Narrative of Frederick Douglass, 370). From an early age he had a slave consciousness but that would …show more content…
While technically it was a way to being a free Black without a master that did not mean that Blacks could have the full rights of a free man in America. The Emancipation Proclamation was supposed to be the channel to the ‘Promise Land’ but there were still discrepancies. The Promise Land is another word for heaven used in biblical writings and often a metaphor for freedom for slaves In another one of W. E. B. Du Bois’s works entitled The Quest of the Silver Fleece one of the main themes was the slavery after slavery. Many of the characters in the novel were still in debt to the rich Cresswell’s who basically controlled the town. Blacks were deceive of how much money they owed to continue a system of Blacks being in debt to whites. It was not until the main character Zora came in that someone questioned the calculations of the Cresswell’s. In the novel there was always a looming fear that those in debt would be taken into the chain gang which is no better than slavery. Not only were the Blacks enslaved to the Cresswell’s the poor whites were also. The Cresswell’s continued to dabble in controversial actions and immoral politics the father died in pain and the son became a drunk abusive husband (Quest of the Silver Fleece, Du Bois). So the question must be asked, which if either are …show more content…
In his chapter entitled “Quest of the Golden Fleece” from The Souls of Black Folk he speaks about the Black farmer post slavery who could not afford land, and was a share cropper? This farmer would owe almost eight hundred pounds to the tenant just for rent. They were free but suffered from insufficient pay for the same work that was required while they were enslaved. Du Bois asks, “What did such a mockery of freedom mean?”(Three African American Classics: The Souls of Black Folk, 255) He this idea of freedom as a mockery because the share croppers lives were indebted to the whites who continued to make it almost impossible to be free of worry. Freedom in these cases would have considered fair treatment and an employee-employer dynamic not a debtor