Dialogue Between A Master And A Slave Analysis

According To Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Reading was the Key to Freedom

In the “Dialogue Between a Master and a Slave”, the slave is very articulate and well argued for. He probably knows how to read and write. The slave knows very well that his master is wrong and he wants to prove him that way and go free. When you learn to read and write, you begin to know new words from that reading. When a six year old child begins to read in the first grade, they don’t know many words, but as they continue to grow and learn new things, they begin to pick up on longer, more delicate words. This was important to Douglass because he wanted to go free. His ultimate goal was to end slavery so he and people in similar situations as he would no longer

He learns that the master isn’t just going to let you off the hook, you have to stick up for yourself. The slave claims he was taken from his homeland and friends only to work all day in the hot sun, a valid point that the master considers. The slave pretty much calls the master a robber and compares him to one. Douglass may learn where he came from, well “my own country” isn’t exactly where he came from, but it’s better to know that than nothing at all. Slave owners in the South may teach this to their children so that their slaves do not try to escape and make arguments like this. The slave owners wouldn’t want to lose a slave or two slaves or more, just because they were good at arguing. In the beginning, Douglass expressed his need for reading, “it was a new and special revelation, explaining dark and mysterious things... I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty-to wit, the white man’s power to enslave the black man.” He knows that, because the white man is educated and knows how to read, the white man is much more well off than Douglass because of his intelligence and understanding. The white man could solve a reading,