As the agriculture production was in great demand in America, white men used indentured servant to cheaply produce the products they needed. However, during this time, slaves started to become more common than indentured servants because, “As Africans, they could not claim the protections of English common law. Slaves’ terms of service never expired…” (Foner, p. 80). This made white men desire to have slaves who they could control and treat however they pleased for however long they wanted. Taking a look at The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, it is easy to see the harsh conditions that slaves, especially Frederick Douglass, encountered during this era. Douglass’ writing also reveals how female slaves were treated differently than …show more content…
Before moving to Baltimore to live with Mr. and Mrs. Auld, Frederick Douglass had no sense of how to read or write and he did not have an eagerness to learn. Once he was living in Baltimore, Mrs. Auld, a free white women who seemed to be free of the evils of slavery, was very kind and she started to teach Frederick the alphabet and other small words, which is an example of how Mrs. Auld was very different from other white women of her time. However, once her husband found out what his wife was doing, he immediately put a stop to it. Mr. Auld said, that if she would teach slaves to read, “There will be no keeping him” (Douglass, p. 42). Upon learning to read small words from Mrs. Auld, a fire was set in Frederick that gave him hope and determination to continue learning, no matter the consequences. While still living in Baltimore, Frederick continued to development new ways to learn to read. One strategy he used, was making friends with white boys who he would meet when running errands for his master. He would often give them bread and in return, they would give him “bread of knowledge” (Douglass, p. 49). This exchange helped Frederick Douglass succeed in learning to read, which increased the hope in his heart that he would one day be a free
“She now commenced to practice her husband’s precepts. She finally became even more violent in her opposition than her husband himself.” (pg.29-31, p.104) Frederick Douglass then found any way to learn to improve his literacy. When he was sent to do errands, he always took a book with him. He would also bring a piece of bread with him.
In his letter, Frederick Douglass take hold on the effect of concrete imagery, syntax, and formal diction to not only demonstrate his experience of learning how to read and write as a slave; but also to inform the audiences the importance of learning and the malevolent face of slavery. Frederick Douglass’s concrete imagery, such as “thus after a long years, I finally succeed in learning how to write.” (page 128), and “they gave tongue to interesting thought of my own soul, which I frequently lashed through my mind and died away for want of utterance.” (page 127); underscore how important learning is to Frederick Douglass. “they gave tongue to interesting thought of my own soul, which I frequently lashed through my mind and died away for want
Douglass got a new viewpoint on slavery when he moved to Baltimore and lived with his new master Hugh Auld and his wife Sophia, who taught Douglass the alphabet for a while until her husband reprimanded her. Douglass learned the rest of the alphabet and how to read from his white friends in town and practiced everyday by himself. He had a fascination with abolitionist newspapers and continually read The Columbian Orator. This was a major turning point in Douglass’s life, reading about abolitionists and free slaves gave him the strength and hope he needed to one day escape and become the man he is. He now had a greater
Frederick Douglass, an eminent human rights leader in the anti-slavery movement, advises high official officers on a range of causes: women’s rights, anti-slavery, and Irish home rule. Before gaining freedom, he acquired the ideological opposition to slavery from reading newspapers and political writings even with the defying ban of literacy for slaves. After a anti-slavery lecturer, William Garrison, urged Douglass, he wrote his first narrative, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, a thought-provoking memoir portraying the hardships of slavery. He vividly illustrated the institution of slavery and its destructive force effectively through the use of imagery and biblical allusions. Comparably, Mary Wollstonecraft,
At eight years old his owner shipped young Douglass to Baltimore, never mind to see his mother again. While in Baltimore he had a better life than a normal slave would have. He got plenty of food and had decent clothes. His new owner's wife started to teach him how to read, but once the owner found out he made her stop teaching him. Douglass really wanted to read so he sought out the help of his friends to teach him how to read and write.
It would be unfit for him to be a slave.” After Frederick learning how to read opened more opportunities for him, but him couldn’t let the white man find
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass tells the true story of a slave who educated himself in order to become free. Frederick Douglass had no ability to read or write until he moved from a remote plantation in Maryland to Baltimore. Douglass had “days in the creek, [and washed] off his plantation scruff” all in preparation to move to Baltimore (Douglass 16). When he arrived at the home of the Auld’s in Baltimore, Mrs. Auld, who had never owned a slave before, “commenced to teach me [Douglass] the A, B, C” (20). This was the first encounter with the written, and spoken word that Frederick Douglass had ever experienced.
According to Mistress Hugh, “education and slavery were incompatible with each other” (Douglass, 33). Although Mistress Hugh had stopped teaching Douglass how to read, the seed of knowledge had already been planted. In the years that followed, his hunger for knowledge did not dissipate. Douglass devised various methods to learn to read and write in very clever ways.
However, literacy turns out to be not only bliss, but also painful. Indeed, while learning to read Frederick becomes more and more aware of the injustices of slavery, and this leads him to regret this knowledge “Learning how to read had become a curse rather than a blessing” ( Douglass ) . Douglass believes in the importance of education. He thinks that education is a key part to our life; it is the only way to get freedom. Literacy is very powerful because it can set anyone free to pursue dreams.
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.
African-American slaves were forbidden to obtain the knowledge of being able to read or write, stemming from the fear of white masters that educated slaves will overpower them. Douglass managed to learn to read by bribing poor and hungry white boys into teaching him in exchange for bits of bread. Douglass illustrates his thirst for literacy through “[The] bread [he] used to bestow upon the hungry little urchins, who, in return, would give [him] that more valuable bread of knowledge” (pg 23). This reveals how much Douglass valued education and took advantage of all the knowledge he had access to. Today’s youth, especially the ones belonging to a minority
Frederick was sent to Baltimore’s home of Hugh Auld. This is where he got his skills to read and write, even though there were laws against teaching slaves how to read and write. Frederick was taught the alphabet when he was just 12 years old and learned from other white children in neighborhood. It was through the power of reading that he saw and started to appose the idea of slavery.
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.
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is Frederick Douglass’s autobiography in which Douglass goes into detail about growing up as a slave and then escaping for a better life. During the early-to-mid 1800s, the period that this book was written, African-American slaves were no more than workers for their masters. Frederick Douglass recounts not only his personal life experiences but also the experiences of his fellow slaves during the period. This book was aimed at abolitionists, so he makes a point to portray the slaves as actual living people, not the inhuman beings that they are treated as. In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, slaves are inhumanly represented by their owners and Frederick Douglass shines a positive light
Douglass states: “The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery” (Douglass 51). Reading and writing opened Frederick Douglass’s eyes to the cause of the abolitionist. He became knowledgeable about a topic that white slave owners tried to keep hidden from their slaves. Literacy would eventually impact his life in more ways than what he could see while he was a young slave under Master Hugh’s