Education Determines Your Destination Education is the light at the end of the tunnel, when Frederick uses it he discovers hope. In the story the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick goes through many struggles on his path to freedom, showing us the road from slavery to freedom. At the beginning of the book, Douglass is a slave in both body and mind. When the book ends, he gets both his legal freedom and frees his mind. The path to freedom was not easy, but it got clearer when he got an education. Education gives hope for Douglass’s life since he began to truly understand what goes on in slavery. As he figured out more about the topic, his self motivation poured out hope in his life. As Frederick saw an opportunity to become …show more content…
Frederick is living with Master Hugh and is self teaching himself because the mistress wants to follow orders from Master Hugh. Even in knowing this it didn’t stop Frederick from pushing towards something he knew he needed. “During this time, I succeeded in learning to read and write. In accomplishing this, I was compelled to resort to various stratagems” (Douglass 50). He was learning and was dedicated by doing multiple strategies to get it done. Some of these strategies consisted in making friends with little white boys off the steer, or taking a book on an errand to advance his reading skills. With this new found knowledge his mindset changes, and he starts to see the world differently. Frederick, with his newfound education, now has hope in his life. It took time learn but it won't be a waste in his …show more content…
Through the planet, education has led to hope in lives, that’s why little kids in third world countries need the education, to get another chance in life. In terms of human trafficking, many today are lured into jobs because of an lack of education and are forced into labor as a result. No one wants to be forced into a life that they have zero control of, and Frederick was willing to fight against it. Though he dealt with lost family and friends, he didn’t lose knowledge, and with knowledge you have
He grasped the oxygen and held it dearly. Learning symbolized survival and by twelve he was willing to follow the more difficult pathway to seek a better life. It took him three attempts to get away from his masters but, with the help of others he did by the age of twenty. Even though Frederick experienced a tremendous amount of physical and psychological pain he still wanted to help anyone suffering from the effects of slavery. Douglass wanted to make things better for his people and wasn’t going to give up until that happened.
In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Douglass talks about how he had to educate himself. Before, he thought that his life as a slave was permanent. He didn’t think of himself as a human, and he wasn’t able to develop as a person. It was after his education that he started to think of his life as a slave and of a plan to escape. He saw himself more as a human being and hated his master for treating him the way he did.
Frederick Douglass was a slave from Maryland who, through luck and intelligence, was able to escape slavery at 20 years old. In his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, he describes how it felt being a slave throughout his childhood and adolescence, as well as the traumatizing conditions on plantations. Douglass also discusses how he learned to read and write, which causes him to consider his position in slavery and helps to inspire his escape. Nevertheless, once he arrives in New York, Douglass’s hope quickly fades as he is faced with the reality of his situation; he is all alone in a place where he could easily be caught and returned to slavery, making the efforts of his escape in vain. In the excerpt from his autobiography,
The power of education is a main theme within A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Douglass 's experiences lead him to recognize its great power and to believe that education is a key in our life. It has the power to open all doors while providing us with several opportunities. Education makes the difference; it expands the human mind since the more we know the more enlightened we are. It makes us free and it avoid us to be enslaved, too.
Frederick Douglass in his narrative “Why I learned to Read and Write” demonstrates how he surpassed many obstacles along the way towards getting an education. These obstacles not only shaped Frederick’s outlook on life but also influenced him in his learning to read and write. Frederick’s main challenge was that of not being an owner of his person but rather a slave and a property to someone else. Frederick Douglass lived in the time when slavery was still taking place and slaveholders viewed slavery and education as incompatible. The slave system didn’t allow mental or physical freedom for slaves; slaveholders were to keep the apt appearance and slaves were to remain ignorant.
Douglass managed to overcome the maltreatment of his wretched slave owners through the eventual attainment of freedom. The injustice imposed upon the African-American slaves by their owners was the crux of Douglass’s motivation to escape this inhumane life. Adolescents in today’s society could use Frederick’s determination as an example of moving forward to better oneself or one’s situation regardless of
Reading the essay and thinking about the experiences Douglass went through to achieve what he wanted; which was the ability to read and write. I think the main idea relates to me by telling me the reader, that education is something so essential to knowing the truth in the words of others, and mastering the ability know about your past. Even though Douglass’s mistress stop teaching after a while, and always tried to prevent him from getting any sort of reading done, that obstacle never stopped him from formulating plans to counteract that depravity. That sense of determination to me outweighed anything that would ever stand in his way. Knowing that mind set Douglass had, constantly reminds myself of a period of time that happened to me when I was a little child.
Douglass believe education was the strength for slaves to gain freedom. Douglass finally succeeded in learning how to write when he was left alone by his mistress and started to practice writing in his Master Thomas’s copy-book. Learning how to read and write help Douglass see slavery as intolerable cruel punishment, so he did not sleep until he became free. By doing so, Frederick Douglas began to write in support of
Douglass’s master forbade his wife from continuing to teach Douglass the alphabet because his master
In his narrative, Frederick Douglass explained the concept of manhood by emphasizing on how one should be acknowledge with their own identities and have their own possession of clothes, shelter, and foods as well as privileges that God has given them. Manhood is an important measurement for Douglass because every man discovers, have desires, and develop passions whenever a man looks into himself or by a mirror of reflection. Throughout his journey as a slave, Douglass observed and experiment the cruciality of mankind when one has the power to take control of their subjects. From Mrs. Auld’s amazing lessons, education has helped him not only able to read and write but also understand the reasons behind slavery existence (Douglass, pg 22-23).
Fredrick Douglass meets Hugh Auld’s wife Sophia and he is surprised about how nice she is. She does not really know how to treat slaves because she has never had them. A slave with education is said to be a dangerous slave so they are not supposed to be taught. However it seems like Mrs. Auld did not know that, and she began to teach Douglass the Alphabet which is a big turning point in Douglass’s life as a slave. Mr. Auld figures out that his wife has been teaching Douglass, and he puts an end to it, and he tells her how dangerous it is to teach a slave.
Because of this, he successfully creates a contrast between what the slave owners think of and treat the slaves and how they are. Douglass says that slave’s minds were “starved by their cruel masters”(Douglass, 48) and that “they had been shut up in mental darkness” (Douglass, 48) and through education, something that they were deprived of, Frederick Douglass is able to open their minds and allow them to flourish into the complex people that they are. By showing a willingness to learn to read and write, the slaves prove that they were much more than what was forced upon them by their masters.
Although Frederick Douglass was not expected to be literate, he taught himself how because he believed that education should be for everyone, not just a few privileged children. Frederick Douglass was a slave for life in the southern United States before the Civil War. He had no regular teacher because, at that time, most slave owners did not believe that their slaves should be taught to read and write. White slave owners thought that if slaves knew how to read, they would go against their owners and fight against slavery.
With all the knowledge he was gaining, he began to comprehend everything around him. The things he was learning fascinated him, but the “more [he] read, the more [he] was led to abhor and detest [his] enslavers”(Douglass 35); however, that should not be viewed as a negative affect but a positive one. No one should want to be deceived for their entire life. This hatred that he built up motivated him to continue to further educate himself. As a result, he later motivated other slaves to earn an education by having “[availed] themselves to [an] opportunity to learn to read” (Douglass 69) by Douglass teaching them every Sunday.
An education often opens new doors for people, but how does a lack of an education affect other people? What causes such a stark difference between people with knowledge and people no knowledge at all? In the Narrative of Frederick Douglass an American Slave we can see that Douglass is more intelligent than the other slaves on the plantation he is living on due to his hidden ability to read. With his level of education, he is able to see the brutal mistreatment of slaves and is unable to look at things the same way when he was an uneducated slave. The slaves on the plantation do not know how to read and therefore do not view being a slave the way Douglass views it.