They're Taking the Slaves to Isengard.

Over the course of my reading of chapters 8 and 9 of Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, it has become clear to me that knowledge, which all humans have an insatiable thirst for, can prove to be as much a curse as a gift. I have come to view it as a parallel to the master ring in The Hobbit. I came about making this odd connection while analyzing how the possession of knowledge transformed Douglass in a relatively short amount of time and realized that the ring held by Bilbo, which quickly transformed him, could easily be interpreted as an allegory for knowledge; knowledge being the ring Douglass now must bear.

In both cases, the discovery of their new-found powers is met with a sense of elation, of power. However for them both it quickly becomes apparent that this power has a major downside. It was a power which they had to keep themselves for fear of higher powers who did not wish for them to have these gifts. For Bilbo these would be the forces of evil who would hunt Bilbo to the ends of the earth for possessing the ring. For Douglass, his equivalent of forces of evil are clearly his masters who fear that with the power of knowledge he may be able to rise up against them much like Bilbo would rise up to defeat the forces of evil with the ring.

Once they become accustomed to the ups and downs of their gifts, they feel enlightened by what they have gained but also severely miss the ignorance they had before. Douglass would often feel that “In moments of agony, [he] envied [his] fellow-slaves for their stupidity”. However they would never give up the knowledge they now possess as they can now barely imagine life without it for it has been etched into their beings and is now a part of them. They must carry it with them and complete their task for it is the only way for them to rid themselves of their complications. For Bilbo this task is slaying a dragon; for Douglass this task is to attain freedom. And while these two things may not seem alike under any circumstances, they are akin to  each other in challenge and both reflect the hero’s determination to rid themselves of the curse which they have acquired.