Creativity in Slaves: Fredrick Douglas

The slave narrative of Fredrick Douglas is much less inspirationally peaceful to read and is more of a human rights piece. He painstakingly accounts more of the abuse he endures as a slave than Equiano shows in his narratives. Still, while Douglas does not appear to have been as resourceful and able to protect himself as Equiano, he shares what I believe to be a characteristic of creativity which all slaves seem to have shared in order to survive.
One of his first homes begins as a pleasant experience, with an initially very kind mistress, Mrs. Auld. Early on, before she converts to a power-tripping, crazy oppressor, she begins teaching him to read little. Upon criticism for educating Douglas by her husband, she stops and eventually transforms as a slave owner. But Douglas gains from hearing Mr. Auld castigate her teaching Douglas, realizing how important reading and writing must be, and how this great power is a threat to his masters. He makes it his main focus to secretly learn to read and write from this day forward. Both the comprehension of the importance of reading from Mr. Auld’s lecture and the means by which Douglas surreptitiously learns to read show great creativity. Douglas befriends poor, hungry white children while running errands, offering them bread to teach him from a stolen book. He also learns the names of letters through attention paid to labels (“s” would be the label for “starboard”). After learning four letters, he would challenge arrogant boys, cleverly tricking them into showing him more letters.
In chapter IX, he recounts his experience with “Captain Auld” as a gruesome living, as he and the other slaves were practically starved to death, and were not only subjected to beatings but torture. He discusses a weakened female slave who was often tied up for five or so hours, whipped, cut and starved for her inability to lift large bushels after an accident which had left her severely burned and injured.
While with Captain Auld, he explains that he was punished because he would “accidentally” lose one of the horses, and have to travel five miles to retrieve him. The truth was that Douglas had intentionally let the horse go because, although the trip was long on an empty stomach, he could fill his stomach at the house of his master’s father-in-law, who always fed his slaves.
Douglas relates in chapter X that he is moved, still under the ownership of Master Auld, to work as a field-hand for a Master Covey. Master Covey is regarded as an incredibly abusive fellow, stripping and cutting Douglas for failing at a task he had no prior experience in on his first day of work. After a grueling six months of torture, Douglas again finds a creative means of bettering his situation. He falls over while working a particularly tiresome task and then has to endure very harsh beatings from Covey. After some time he stops complying to Covey’s demands to get up a return to his work, but lets Covey commit violence to him. He then walks seven miles, ignoring Covey’s protests, to Master Auld. He assumes that if he comes to Master Auld all bloody and beaten, requests his protection and conveys that Covey is harming his own bosses property (his slave) he will face better treatment. Though this proves to be an incorrect assumption, it still shows a great amount of creativity in his problem solving. Though he eventually finds that he has to face and defeat Covey in a fight to gain any respect, he tried creatively peaceful resistance first.