In “Learning to Read and Write” by Fredrick Douglass, Douglass went through many obstacles to learn to read and write. He was living with the Hugh family for quite some time about seven years. Douglass’s first learned the alphabet from his mistress. Douglass goes on about how his mistress is so kind and nice to him even though she eventually converted to her husband practices and dehumanized him. According to Douglass, he says, “She at first lacked the depravity indispensable to shutting me up in mental darkness. It was at least necessary for her to have some training in the exercise of irresponsible power, to make her equal to the task as treating me as though I were a brute.” (100) His mistress eventually established that slavery and education were unsuited for one another. (101) Douglass could no longer be seen reading a book at the Hugh family house because it would be taken …show more content…
Douglass befriended all the little white boys and transformed them into educators. (101) Soon enough, he learned how to read. Douglass started reading the “The Columbian Orator”, which taught him more about slavery in result made him hate his enslavers. Douglass states, “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.” (103) Learning to read was also a curse for Douglass because he began learning things about slavery that made him angry. After, Douglass learned horrible information about slavery, he wanted to know more. That’s when he stumbled across the word “abolitionist.” Douglass didn’t quite know what the word abolition meant but he knew it was always used in a positive way for slaves. For example, if a slave escaped to freedom. Douglass grew an interest for the words abolition and abolitionist after he fully grasped the meaning of the words and was set on learning more about
In the article, “Learning to Read and Write” by Frederick Douglass, he achieved to learn how to read and write in the time of slavery in Maryland. At a young age he learned how to be literate. But then he was a slave that not only thought about being free but wanted to learn how to read and write. His mistress only helped him to learn the alphabet, but he was also accused of reading, so she never trusted him to be near a newspaper, book or anything that had to do with reading. Sometimes he would get sent to run errands and he tries to finish it fast so he can read a part in a book that he found or get some lessons.
Frederick Douglass wrote the article “Learning to Read and Write”. Douglass was a slave trying to learn to read and write. Douglass talks about how he was successful in learning to read and write, for him to carry out this, he had to resort to different strategies. Douglass was making friends of all the boys, he traded bread for knowledge, he didn’t give them up when they helped him with learning to read and write, so then Douglass and the boys would talk to each other about how they wish to be free. The book Columbian Orator was used in schoolrooms in the nineteenth century to learn how to read and speak, it also taught people how to read and write, it was a big part of Douglass’ plan to learn to read and write.
In Frederick Douglass’s essay “Learning to Read and Write,” he uses his essay to get the point across by being educated in reading, he learns he is a “slave for life.” By that saying he realizes that if he ever becomes free from slavery, he will never be free in a state of mind. He is always going to be a slave, weather it would be master huge, or learning. So learning to read and understand the meaning of words he sees his problem of being able to read and have the ability to understand what happening around him; through “The Colombian Orator.” And after reading and understanding, no man should be a slave.
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
The mid- to late-nineteenth century was a dark time for slaves in the United States of America. There was a constant struggle for power and social standing in the South, and slaves, were caught in the middle. In order for Frederick Douglass to free himself from the educational and spiritual darkness of slavery, it was essential for him to learn to read and write. Throughout his childhood Douglass was passionate about his need for education.
Baltimore was a completely different world for him, with many new experiences, but the most important thing he learned there was the power of education. His abolitionist spark came from one overheard lecture between his master and mistress, the words “learning would spoil the best nigger in the world” (84) is what turned Douglass into a man powered by the want of liberty and freedom. Teaching himself how to read and write, Douglass became the definition of a self-educated man. In his time of despair instead of doing off with himself like he thought of, Douglass began to yearn for the word “slavery” to fall off of a person’s lips, “eager to hear any
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.
In his article, Douglass first explains where he lived and gave acknowledgement to the women who helped him succeed in reading and writing. He says “I had no regular teacher. My mistress, who had kindly commenced to instruct me, had in compliance with advice and direction of her husband, not only ceased to instruct,
Douglass began to view reading as a curse more than a blessing; a way in which he felt more imprisoned by the slave state he was in. Thus, the more he read the more he began to detest enslavers; which nonetheless in his mind would be nothing but thieves whom robbed slave’s homes. For it was not only reading but his ceaseless mind getting the best of him; such reading would create endless thoughts which haunted him and made him wish that he would remain an ignorant slave. Nonetheless, during Douglass’s thoughts, Douglass began to learn to
Fredrick Douglass was a black slave during the 1800’s who escaped from his master and came to the North. His age is unknown as stated by Fredrick Douglass (1845/1995), a great orator who brought many to the abolitionist cause, in his work, Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, “I was born in Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough, and about twelve miles from Easton, in Talbot County, Maryland. I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it” (p.1). While Douglass was a slave he was convinced that education was the path to freedom, he also witnessed the horrors of slavery, and would most likely hold the same views in today’s world as he had back in the 1800’s. Douglass believed that education was the path to freedom and the view was correct.
In Frederick Douglas, “Learning to Read and Write,” Douglass uses an empathic tone, and telling details to convince his audience about the humanity and intelligence of enslaved African and the evils of slavery. Frederick Douglass alternated experience with the elevated diction, imagery with emotion in order to illuminate abolitionists of the need for slaves to become free. Douglass essay is well put into effect, with the struggle’s he endured as a slave and as well as the accomplishments on achieving to learn to read and write in insuperable odds, during a period where slaves had disadvantage and prohibited from learning how to read or write. With a determined and ambition approach, he showed us how important he thinks it is for slaves to
Douglass’s master forbade his wife from continuing to teach Douglass the alphabet because his master
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.
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
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.