Literacy Narrative

The subject of the literacy scene in slave narratives has been discussed by William Lloyd Garrison, as a common convention of authentication. In it, we see a slave owner usually teaching the slave. It would seem that this education would advance the position of the slave, but in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass An American Slave Written by Himself the author Douglass shows his reader that literacy was not enough to set him free Throughout this text Douglass mentions how slaves were denied by the masters, their basic needs that would help them to construct their identity. At the beginning of the book Douglass says, slaves were rarely known the specific time and date when they were born. In a sense, to know one’s birth date gives one human identity. Slaveholders tried to keep slaves in the same level of animal, they did not allow their slave to get the basic knowledge. Douglass declares that when he started to read he started to feel independent, and free. He meant a part of reading and writing helped him to see himself differently, not the way Douglass’ masters see himself. Literacy raised his sense of humanity. He became aware that education would disable him from performing his duty as a slave. He also became aware that it would require more than literacy to be free. Literacy was merely a turning point that led him to the greater turning point of action – thus education and action combined became his formula for freedom.

From the beginning of the chapter one Douglass mentioned his separation from his origin, from his parents, therefore he did not know himself. He was kept from the knowledge of his position in society. In the first paragraph of chapter one, I noticed more than eight rhetorical expressions of negative...

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... existence an entirely new train of thought. It was a new and special revelation, explaining dark and mysterious things, with which my youthful understanding had struggled, but struggled in vain. From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom” (31-32). Douglass’ speech seems very straightforward. He understands and opposes the idea ‘the white man’s power to enslave the black man’ and he thinks literacy and freedom are connected together. As Henry Louis Gates Jr. mentions in his writing about the relationship between literacy and freedom. He said, “Literacy was a commodity [slaves] were forced to trade for their humanity" (The Slave's Narrative xxviii). Literacy is not God gifted skill. Even though white European thinks without education people like slave are subhuman. So, Douglass thinks literacy is the only way to prove himself as a human.