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education is key in the narrative of the life of frederick douglass essay
education is key in the narrative of the life of frederick douglass essay
the effects of slavery
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Education was one of the main themes in Narrative of the Life of Frederic Douglass. He felt it was very important to learn how to read, write and have a solid educational background. In addition, Frederick Douglass shared his personal story about slavery and the way a man could rise above it and make something of himself. Douglass showed readers how he made himself free; and freedom is not something that is given, but something that one can find for themselves. Throughout the narrative, Douglass described the cruelty of slavery and the horrible living conditions slaves had to endure. He highlighted how he learned the importance of educating himself and his claim of being a man, a human being with rights, no matter what the issue was. Douglass defined freedom as more than escape from slaveholders. There are many ways a person can be enslaved as well as all the ways people can be free. Despite the many ways to prevent little or no education, for slaves in the south, education was a major role in the abolition of slavery and someone like Frederick Douglass used the education that he taught himself, to teach others and come out from a slave to a free man.
In chapter one of the narrative, Douglass explains that his master separated him from his mother soon after his birth. This separation ensured that Douglass did not develop familial feelings towards his mother. Douglass devotes large parts of his narrative to demonstrating how a slave is “made” beginning at birth. He gave details how slaveholders first remove a child from his immediate family, and how that destroys a child’s support network and sense of personal history.
Douglass never knew a lot about himself, including how old he was. The white children were able to tell their a...
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...he evils of slavery.
Freedom to Frederick Douglass means a place where you are not scared of being taken into bondage. He didn’t believe anywhere in the United States is free because there is always the chance that a black man can be taken back into slavery because of the Fugitive Slave Laws. He believed that if a slave had the power to read or write, they had the power to free themselves. Frederick Douglass became the leading black abolitionist and one the most famous speakers of his time. His words about his treatment as a slave were a powerful weapon against slavery. People were starting to question whether he was a slave or not, which motivated him to publish his first autobiography. His narrative was one of the most effective accounts written by a fugitive slave, and it became a major source of information about slavery and a classic of American literature.
From before the country’s conception to the war that divided it and the fallout that abolished it, slavery has been heavily engrained in the American society. From poor white yeoman farmers, to Northern abolitionist, to Southern gentry, and apathetic northerners slavery transformed the way people viewed both their life and liberty. To truly understand the impact that slavery has had on American society one has to look no further than those who have experienced them firsthand. Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave and advocate for the abolitionist, is on such person. Douglass was a living contradiction to American society during his time. He was an African-American man, self-taught, knowledgeable, well-spoken, and a robust writer. Douglass displayed a level of skill that few of his people at the time could acquire. With his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave Written by Himself, Douglass captivated the people of his time with his firsthand accounts into the horror and brutality that is the institution of slavery.
In the Narrative of Fredrick Douglass, Fredrick Douglass gives an integral account of what life was like for enslaved people during the 19th century and likewise makes it a paramount issue. He was born a slave, however, he had the mental capacity to see himself free. Douglass’s narrative explores a plethora of themes which proved vitally relevant to his freedom. The themes of self-determination, self-worth and enslavement resounds clearly throughout the narrative and is told with only the genius that Fredrick Douglass can tell it. Similarly, Douglass ultimately uses these themes as liberating factors in his life. Most importantly, Fredrick Douglass was able to bridge many gaps because of his inside perspective on the institution of slavery.
Frederick Douglass, an African American social reformer who escaped from slavery, in his autobiography “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself,” denotes the perilous life of a slave in the South. Through syntax, Douglass is able to persuade his readers to support the abolitionist movement as his writing transitions from shifting sentence lengths to parallel structure and finally to varying uses of punctuation. Douglass begins his memoir with a combination of long and short sentences that serve to effectively depict life his life as a slave. This depiction is significant because it illustrates the treatment of slaves in the south allows his audience to despise the horrors of slavery. In addition, this
Douglass begins his book by discussing how he began his life as a slave and illustrated how much slaves owners withheld from their slaves. For example, Douglass explains that he was never told his age, and up to the point of his own death he did not know his birthday (19). He did however, over hear his master in a conversation and from that concluded that he was born somewhere around 1818. Not allowing slaves to know too much about themselves had a dehumanizing effect on them, because it implied that the worth of a slave was equal to, or even less than animals. Douglass reinforces this...
Frederick Douglass’ source, “The Desire for Freedom” was written in 1845. He was born into slavery in 1818 and became an important figure in the fight for abolition. Douglass was also involved in other reform movements such as the women’s rights movement. He “experienced slavery in all its variety, from work as a house servant and as a skilled craftsman in Baltimore shipyard to labor as a plantation field hand” (Pg.207¬). “The Desire for Freedom” was meant to document how his life was within slavery and how his education could someday help him escape it. Douglass meant to speak to American slaves and those who did not really understand slavery in order to help persuade everyone that life was meant to be lived freely. In order to obtain this future, Douglass wrote about his own personal experience and how he believed that enslavers were “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” (Pg. 208). This source brings on the idea that slaves were willing to fight back, wanted to be educated, and, most importantly, wanted the chance to live life freely.
The reader is first introduced to the idea of Douglass’s formation of identity outside the constraints of slavery before he or she even begins reading the narrative. By viewing the title page and reading the words “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, written by himself” the reader sees the advancement Douglass made from a dependent slave to an independent author (Stone 134). As a slave, he was forbidden a voice with which he might speak out against slavery. Furthermore, the traditional roles of slavery would have had him uneducated—unable to read and incapable of writing. However, by examining the full meaning of the title page, the reader is introduced to Douglass’s refusal to adhere to the slave role of uneducated and voiceless. Thus, even before reading the work, the reader knows that Douglass will show “how a slave was made a man” through “speaking out—the symbolic act of self-definition” (Stone 135).
Freedom is something many slaves never had the opportunity to witness. They were simply uneducated, illiterate machines who did whatever they were told. But few fortunate slaves were given the gift to be educated by someone. One of these fortunate persons was named Frederick Douglass. Douglass was born a slave. He never had the chance of knowing his mother. As mentioned before, slaves were stripped from their families, leaving them no sense of compassion. In the book, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Douglass says, "Never having enjoyed, to any considerable extent, her soothing presence, her tender and watchful care, I received the tidings of her death with much of the same emotions I should have probably felt at the death of a stranger."(2) Douglass secretly met with his mother about 4 times during his whole life. He said he never really got to know her being he was only a child and the never had much of a conversation. These sorts of incidents happened to slaves throughout America and permanently scarred most slaves and their families.
...o not only reveal what kind of terrible things slaves must endure, but also to show that all black people are capable of being much more than slaves. Douglass voices his opinions to move people toward abolitionism and gain support from the white community. The journey from slave to freed man was a very long one, but well worth it because Douglass was a very influential figure during the abolitionary movement and because of his words, many slaves were given the opportunities to make their own journey to freedom.
Frederick Douglass’s narrative unveils a large number of ways in which African Americans suffered under the oppression of slavery. For instance, many slaves including Douglass himself, did not know their own birthdays or much of their own family history. This was most likely the result of slave children being separated from their actual blood relatives either at birth or due to being sold to different slave owners.
There are a number of key arguments in “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”. A few of which include inequality, education, and Christianity as the keys to freedom in terms of its true values within the institution of slavery. While Frederick Douglass made some key arguments, he also made common ground to make his appeal for the abolition of slavery.
Frederick Douglass emphasizes the dehumanization aspect of slavery throughout his narrative. As is the general custom in slavery, Douglass is separated from his mother early in infancy and put under the care of his grandmother. He recalls having met his mother several times, but only during the night. She would make the trip from her farm twelve miles away just to spend a little time with her child. She dies when Douglass is about seven years old. He is withheld from seeing her in her illness, death, and burial. Having limited contact with her, the news of her death, at the time, is like a death of a stranger. Douglass also never really knew the identity of his father and conveys a feeling of emptiness and disgust when he writes, "the whisper that my master was my father, may or may not be true; and, true or false, it is of but little consequence to my purpose" (Douglass, 40). Douglass points out that many slave children have their masters as their father. In these times, frequently the master would take advantage of female slaves and the children born to the slave w...
Let us begin with what is, perhaps, the most famous Douglass quotation: "You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man" (64). This sentence serves as the turning point, the climax, of both Douglass' narrative and his life. Up until that point, throughout his entire life, the world had been busy making him a slave. From the moment he was born to a slave mother (even though his father was white), the forces of slavery had been suffocating his humanity. When he was forcibly separated from his mother, he lost the human closeness of family. When he helplessly witnessed his aunt being brutally beaten and was subjected to repeated beatings himself, he lost the human sense of pride. And, when he was denied education and literacy, he lost the human ability to obtain knowledge. In all of these ways, society turned Frederick Douglass, a man, int...
The Narrative of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass is written to have people place their feet in the shoes of Frederick Douglass and try to understand the experience he went through as a slave. Douglass writes this piece of literature with strong wording to get his point across. He is not trying to point out the unpleasant parts of history, but to make people face the truth. He wants readers to realize that slavery is brutalizing and dehumanizing, that a slave is able to become a man, and that some slaves, like himself, have intellectual ability. These points are commonly presented through the words of Douglass because of his diction.
When first introduced to Douglass and his story, we find him to be a young slave boy filled with information about those around him. Not only does he speak from the view point of an observer, but he speaks of many typical stereotypes in the slave life. At this point in his life, Frederick is inexperienced and knows nothing of the pleasures of things such as reading, writing, or even the rights everyone should be entitled to. Douglass knowing hardly anything of his family, their whereabouts, or his background, seems to be equivalent to the many other slaves at the time. As a child Frederick Douglass sees the injustices around him and observes them, yet as the story continues we begin to see a change.
The significant of education in “Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass” is the most important theme in the entire passage. Frederick Douglass understands that the only way to freedom, for him and also other slaves, is through learning to read, write, and also have an education. Education helps Frederick to understand things that slowly will destroy his mind, and heart at the same time. Understanding the full extent of the horrors of slavery can be devastating to a person who has just set mind on morals, and values. In the passage Frederick says, “It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but offered no ladder upon which to get out” (Douglass 61). Using this quote as your guide, the reader can examine the meaning and importance of education with slavery time, and modern day.