Within Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of an American Slave, Anton Chekhov's short story "The Lady with the Dog", and Richard Wright's short story "The Man who was Almost a Man, we find characters who are dominated by conflict between their sense of obligation and their personal preferences, i.e., duty versus desire. I shall explain the dynamics of each main character's conflict, in terms of opposition between duty and desire, in terms of an internal antagonism. I shall also explain why each character's conflict is central to an understanding of the work as a whole, identifying the conflict and explaining how it underscores meaning of the work.

             Slaveholders' typical attitudes, during the early 19th century, about a slave's becoming literate are expressed by Hugh Auld, the Baltimore guardian of the nine-year-old Frederick Douglass, as recalled by Douglass in his Narrative of the Life of a Slave (1845). The conflict Frederick Douglass faces, in this portion of his autobiography, is that teaching a slave to read is illegal, but that he, Frederick, wants desperately to learn to read and write. To do so, however, will catapult him into a position of being literate, which will (and did) make his life as a slave even more intolerable. Still, even after Hugh Auld prevents his wife Sophie from giving Frederick anymore reading lessons, he persists with learning to read, by bribing neighborhood white boys to teach him their lessons, and by saving his money in order to buy himself a copy of the book Columbian Orator. The conflict is between the law and the "morality" of the time, and Frederick's own thirst for knowledge. The latter wins out. .

             Upon Hugh Auld's first learning that his wife Sophia has begun to teach young Frederick to read, he stated: .

             If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell. A nigger should know.

             nothing but to obey his master -- to do as he is told to do.