Literacy plays an important part in helping Douglass achieve his freedom. Learning to read and write enlightened his mind to the injustice of slavery; it kindled in his heart longings for liberty. Douglass’s skills proved instrumental in his attempts of escape and afterwards in his mission as a spokesman against slavery. Douglass was motivated to learn how to read by hearing his master condemn the education of slaves. Mr. Auld declared that an education would “spoil” him and “forever unfit him to be a slave” (2054). He believed that the ability to read makes a slave “unmanageable” and “discontented” (2054). Douglass discovered that the “white man’s power to enslave the black man” (2054) was in his literacy and education. As long as the slaves are ignorant, they would be resigned to their fate. However, if the slaves are educated, they would understand that they are as fully human as the white men and realize the unfairness of their treatment. Education is like a forbidden fruit to the slave; therefore, the slave owners guard against this knowledge of good and evil. Nevertheless, D...
Douglass was not aware of what slaves were and why they were treated in a bad condition before he learns how to read. He was deeply saddened upon discovering the fact that slaves were not given the rights every human being should have. In an effort to clarify Douglass’s feelings of anguish, he states: “In moments of agony, I envied my fellow slaves for their stupidity” (Douglass 146). The fact that other slaves are content with their lives is what brings awareness to him because he knows that he is stripped of basic human rights. He envies his fellow slaves due to the reason that they are pleased with the life he cannot live to like anymore. Also, he is often wishing he never learned how to read because he doesn’t want to burden about his life. Douglass knows more about the disturbing conditions than most of the slaves around him, but he greatly regrets it. Before he started reading, he lived very much in contentment and now he cannot stand the fact of being
Their education had given them a new perspective of everything around them—a glimpse to a whole new world. Upon learning to read, Douglass began to realize how an education could ruin slaves. With education, comes enlightenment, and for him his enlightenment was the realization to the injustices going on around him. With him finally being able to read, he understood more fully the implications of slavery sometimes served to make him more miserable as he came to comprehend the hopelessness of the situation for himself and the other slaves. He states in his narrative, “In moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me” (268) because he realized that his knowledge came at a cost—he knew that there was nothing normal and right about slavery, yet he had to live as one—whatever knowledge he had attained, festered in his mind and made him even unhappier with the conditions and treatment than
Douglass tells the story of Sophia Auld, the wife of his slave master, who almost taught him to read. Douglass says “she [Ms. Auld] kindly commenced to teach me the A, B, C,” and “assisted me in learning to spell words” (63). Douglass notes Ms. Auld as a good slave master who reduced the “dehumanizing effects of slavery” (63). Unfortunately, as Douglass mentions, the slave code and Mr. Auld “forbade” any instruction because it was “unlawful to teach a slave to read” (63). The code forbids reading because, as Mr. Auld says “Learning would spoil the best n-- in the world,” which references the supremacy that masters wish to maintain over their slaves (63). In addition, by forcing slaves to remain illiterate, the law trapped slaves in the vicious cycle of slavery by not offering them any skills to end the cycle. The ban on education restricted a slave 's right to liberty by forcing them to remain ignorant about the world and socially oppressing them. The ban on education also restricts Douglass’s right to the pursuit of happiness by preventing him from pursuing his passion. Douglass’s description of the slave code and its ban on education probes into the reader 's moral conscience by forcing them to understand the restrictions that slavery placed on the rights to liberty and the pursuit of
... and unhappy (Douglass 78).” Learning how to read was as big a step towards freedom for Douglass as it was back. It made him aware of the circumstances but it also made him realize how difficult it would be for him to ever find himself a free man. However, knowledge overpowers ignorance in the sense that his masters could never take his ability to read away from him and because Douglass now knew his condition, he knew that he deserved a better life.
Slaves are not allowed the opportunity of being educated, most slave holders generally go against slave literacy because they know education is knowledge and with knowledge comes truth. They are also concerned that if some slaves get an education, the literate slaves will forge passes, influence other slaves to rebel against their masters and try to escape which will cause a lot of dilemma among slaves and slave masters. Understanding the consequences of learning how to read and write, some slaves still often found alternative ways to learning. On plantations and ships, learning how to read and write became a communal effort, according to Deborah Brandt in The Process of Literacy as Communal Involvement in the Narratives of Frederick Douglass . She points out that “literacy involves met communication, involvement, and inter-subjectivity- a strong sense of shared human activity and new opportunities for community” (365). Brandt’s perspective explains why most slaves needed each other to learn how...
Douglass effectively opposes the argument of Mr. Auld’s explanation for the problem with teaching slaves to read through the use of logic, irony, and ethos. In chapters 6 and 7, Douglass builds his opposition of the idea through first-hand experiences.
Fredrick Douglass’s was a slave whom only desire was to learn to read and write. Being a slave, this proved to be a challenge but also an opportunity at the same time. Finding every little opportunity to practice his writing and reading, he would find himself being mistreated. Douglass explains, ”I have had her [His mistress] rush at me with a face made all up of fury, and snatch from me a newspaper, in a manner that relieved her apprehension”(Learning Read Write Douglass 1). Douglass many times was shut down and robbed of the opportunity to write and read, he would later hind himself making teachers of his own by asking and challenging white men write better than him. By him doing
proved to be invaluable to him in life. In Douglass's own words, "In learning to read, I
Frederick Douglass’s “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass an American Slave” recounts the life of Frederick Douglass as a slave on his journey to finding freedom. As a slave, he was treated as a second-rate citizen and was not taught how to be literate. Literacy is the ability to read and write. Slaves were robbed of the privilege of reading and writing and thus robbed of any educational means. Without these educational means, slaves were not allowed to grow in society and have a sense of capability within society. Instead, slaves were suppressed by the white man as property and forced to labor as the lowest part of society. Literacy is the education that separates humans from other forms of life and whites from slaves. Literacy
Douglass says that when he was young, his mistress, Mrs. Auld, taught him the alphabet and subsequently, tried teaching him how to read. However, he said that her husband, Mr. Auld, soon found what was going on and forbade her to teach Douglass how to read. Mr. Auld told his wife, that it was “unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read” (Douglass, 38). He further said, that if Douglass learned how to read, “he would become unmanageable, and of no value to his master” (Douglass, 39). With the words of his master, Douglass realized that receiving an education could free a slave from the chains of slavery and that by not education their slaves, white people were able to control them. Although, his education from his mistress stopped, Frederick Douglass did not stop trying to learn to read. At the age of 12, he says that “the thought of being a slave for life began to bear heavily upon my heart”, but he found a book at that time, in which a conversation between a slave and his master gave him hope to continue living (Douglass, 44). In the book the slave was well spoken and educated, so “the conversation resulted in the voluntary emancipation of the slave on the part of the master” (Douglass,
Douglass views his education as his most important feature, but he also enables his brain to the realizing of the torture upon his fellow slaves. Douglass was not allowed to learn, because he was a slave, and they didn’t want slaves to become smarter than the whites. In the passage it states, “learning would ...
In Douglass’ book, he narrates his earliest accounts of being a slave. At a young age, he acknowledges that it was a masters’ prerequisite to “keep their slaves thus ignorant”, reporting he had no true account of his age, and was groomed to believe, “a want of information concerning my own was a source of unhappiness to me even during childhood” (25). This mindset was inbreeded in slaves to use ignorance as control and power. As a child, Douglass is separated from his mother. Thus, he comprehends this is implemented in slavery to disengage any mental, physical, and emotional bond within families and to benefit slave owners concern of uprooting slaves for trade. He illustrates the “norm” action and response of a slave to the master. To describe the typical dialogue, he states, “To all these complaints, no matter how unjust, the slave must answer never a word”, and in response “a slave must stand, listen, and tremble” (38). In the course of his narrative, he describes several excruciating acts of abuse on slaves. His first memory of this exploitation, the lashing of his Aunt Hester, he depicts as, “the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery” (29). Also, he gives accounts of owners’ self-deception tactics, injustices, and in effect, shaping characteristics of prejudice, jealousy, and dishonesty of slaves towards slaves. Likewise, connecting to the reader, slave...
Douglass's narrative is, on one surface, intended to show the barbarity and injustice of slavery. However, the underlying argument is that freedom is not simply attained through a physical escape from forced labor, but through a mental liberation from the attitude created by Southern slavery. The slaves of the South were psychologically oppressed by the slaveholders' disrespect for a slave’s family and for their education, as well as by the slaves' acceptance of their own subordination. Additionally, the slaveholders were trapped by a mentality that allowed them to justify behavior towards human beings that would normally not be acceptable. In this manner, both slaveholder and slave are corrupted by slavery.
In the autobiography, “The Narrative of Frederik Douglas” by Frederik Douglass, Douglass discussed his experience as a slave and how he wished to escape slavery. He wanted to break free physically and mentally from slavery. Although, it’s hard for slaves to receive their freedom due to slave laws and immoral treatment from their slave masters. Douglass decided to escape from his slave masters corrupt plantation and migrated to the north in search of his freedom. He escaped to the north after he self-teaches himself how to read and write and discovers about the abolitionist movement. Although he faced challenges along the way such as finding places to hide and people to trust, he eventually finds freedom in the north. Once, he arrived in the
Not surprisingly, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass tells a story of empowerment and hope. Douglass notes that it was his education that allowed him to have freedom. By educating himself, he was allowed to break free of the power over relationships of his masters and was able to genuinely make a change in his own life. It is because of this that the two main themes of this novel are ignorance and knowledge. More than anything, Douglass argues, the education of an individual, especially a slave, is the most liberating experience one could have. He argues that it’s knowledge that helps the slaves to begin to articulate the horrors of slavery and the injustices that they had experienced. Through this, it is argued that the only thing that kept slavery alive was the ignorant state that the masters kept their slaves