Compare And Contrast Thoreau And Frederick Douglass

While Thoreau’s admiration for the true human spirit and self-reliance is admirable it is also problematic because it is from a privileged viewpoint. Thoreau is also a hyper intelligent, able-bodied man in the early 19th century. And Fredrick Douglass might also represent a privileged viewpoint because he was able to recognize forms of the system that was constructed around him because of his hyper intelligence. While reading and exploring thought elevated his self-reliance and independence it was his own personal intelligence and determination to be able to dismantle his social barriers. While I do not believe Douglass is the only slave to push back on his physical and mental bondage, it can be assumed that it was not the norm of American Slavery because then slavery might

Thoreau and Douglass may be more exceptions to the rules rather than the norm. Thoreau had the ability and skill to be able to build his own house or tend to a garden to grow his own food. Thoreau can choose to live outside of society and capitalism while others less fortunate depend on the system to survive. One example of this is the institution of slavery in its entirety that was able to break and mentally and physically bind enslaved people for so long. When describing a mans transition into slavery Douglass describes it as his,
“natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!”

Even though Frederick Douglass was this extraordinarily intelligent man he was still subject to the social constructs that eventually let him lose sit of knowledge and made him “a brute.” It is difficult to believe that all men can overcome their circumstances and become self-reliance without help. Even Thoreau the master transidentialist is bound by his own ideological and