The relationship between self and other tries to renegotiate the power of slavery through various terms of literacy in The Narrative of Fredrick Douglass. The slaveholders believe that keeping their slaves ignorant will continue to perpetrate the power relationship. By keeping slaves in the dark, it robs them of individual identity and keeps them as an other. Allowing slaves to become literate would only cause issues. Slaves eventually would question the power relationships whites held over them. Southern slaveholders maintain the control over their slaves and also what Americans thought about slavery. In the narrative, Auld forbids his wife from teaching Douglass how to read or write, acknowledging the idea that it would ruin his slave. Douglass
