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Frederick Douglass Narrative Essay

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The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass tells the true story of a slave who educated himself in order to become free. Frederick Douglass had no ability to read or write until he moved from a remote plantation in Maryland to Baltimore. Douglass had “days in the creek, [and washed] off his plantation scruff” all in preparation to move to Baltimore (Douglass 16). When he arrived at the home of the Auld’s in Baltimore, Mrs. Auld, who had never owned a slave before, “commenced to teach me [Douglass] the A, B, C” (20). This was the first encounter with the written, and spoken word that Frederick Douglass had ever experienced. At this time in America, it was “unlawful, as well as unsafe to teach a slave to read” (20). Mr. Auld ridiculed his wife for beginning to educate her slave, and told her “If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell. A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master—to do as he is told to do. Learning will spoil the best nigger in the world” (20). Education, the ability to read and write, would make Douglass “forever unfit to be a slave” and would only add to his ability to reach the freedom he realized is out there in the world he is living in. …show more content…

The experience Frederick Douglass had becoming literate cause him to fluctuate between a strong desire to continue in his journey, and at points he just wants to give up all hope. Douglass describes the written word, which he is finally able to understand, as the “pathway from slavery to freedom” (20). Frederick Douglass had a sense of language and writing that was practical in its ability to serve the purpose he needed. His ability to teach himself proves how strong of a slave he was, and the path to freedom would only inch closer and closer as he further understood the power of the written

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When Douglass would run errands he would do it fast and have extra time to have a reading lesson before returning back home. He use to take bread for those who knew how to read but would starve. In exchange for a lesson they would give bread. When he was sent to Edward Covey to be “broken,” Douglass took another step toward eventual freedom. When he was told to get up after trying again and again.

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In his article "Learning to Read and Write" Frederick Douglass portrays how he figured out how to read and write furthermore the difficulties he needed to manage in his state of being a slave since youth. We find that Douglass was in hand by the Hugh family for a long time. it's inside this day and age that he figured out how to read and write. At the beginning, Douglass was told to read by Mrs. Hugh, notwithstanding, a little while later she took identical approach towards slavery as her significant other and normally much more dreadful. Where as once she would support Douglass' learning, she immediately attempted to end it at any expense.

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Douglass’s passion to gain knowledge motivated him to teach himself how to read and write; however, Wright’s knowledge developed from being able to go to school and so this is indicative of Douglass experiencing education far worse than Wright. According to Douglass, it was prohibited for slaves to be educated. Since slaves did not have access to an education, Douglass had to find ways to self-teach himself. By virtue of Douglass’s learning, he asserts that: “All the little white boys whom I met in the street… I converted [them] into teachers… [and] I finally succeeded in learning how to read” (Douglass 146).

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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.

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Many of us take education for granted and don’t learn to our fullest potential, but Fredrick Douglass soaked in every piece of information up because he knew it was his way out. “Learning to Read and Write” is a famous article based on what Fredrick Douglass went through to earn a valuable education while being enslaved. Author Fredrick Douglass, wrote “Learning to Read and Write”, published in 1845. Throughout the article, he takes us through different events he goes through while being enslaved. Douglass begins building his credibility with personal facts and successfully demonstrating logic and pathos appeal.

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“Learning to Read and Write” is a narrative writing that successfully grabbed the attention of readers in the context of society in Maryland between 1830–1840. Frederick Douglass, the author of the writing, was born a slave in 1818 in Maryland (Douglass 100). At that time, a slave who was able to read and write was unacceptable and like a crime in society. Douglass, an ambitious and strong-minded man, would learn to do both read and write. That was amazing!

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Douglass learned to read and write when he was living in the Auld’s household for seven years and being tutored by Mrs. Auld who taught him how to spell (Douglass 259). A lesson that we can all learned from Frederick Douglass enduring the Legacies of slavery in today's society is being able to face the world and to do what he did to fight for what we believe in as people of color. Instead of letting people use us as property and dehumanize colored Americans, because Douglass spent his life trying to get end slavery so that the world would be better off without colored people being held in captivity. It seemed like Douglass did not want others to go through what he went through as a slave not being able to be

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Frederick Douglass in his narrative “Why I learned to Read and Write” demonstrates how he surpassed many obstacles along the way towards getting an education. These obstacles not only shaped Frederick’s outlook on life but also influenced him in his learning to read and write. Frederick’s main challenge was that of not being an owner of his person but rather a slave and a property to someone else. Frederick Douglass lived in the time when slavery was still taking place and slaveholders viewed slavery and education as incompatible. The slave system didn’t allow mental or physical freedom for slaves; slaveholders were to keep the apt appearance and slaves were to remain ignorant.

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After reading Frederick Douglass’s essay “How I Learned to Read and Write”, I found that it is a difficult read as it involves a lot of perplexing and unfamiliar language style. I had to take notes and highlight certain phrases and fragments in order to understand his life story about reading. At the beginning, it was challenging to understand the idea he was suggesting – how his struggle to read lead him to a new world for him and changed his perspective about slavery. However, in the end, the essay is almost self-explanatory as it concludes that he managed to learn how to write, enables him to communicate better. One of the biggest difficulties I had when reading this paper was due to the confusing language and metaphors that leads to the

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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.

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After being sent to Baltimore at a young age, Douglass began his education when his [new] mistress, Sophia Auld, began to teach him the alphabet. However, after Sophia’s husband discovered what was going on, he forbade her from offering Douglass more instruction, given that teaching an enslaved person to read was illegal. It was through his undeterred desire to pursue his education that Douglass’ ideological opposition to slavery began to form. Using the rhetorical appeal of ethos, Douglass writes, “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.”

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Douglass overheard what he said and knew that if he ever wanted to be a freeman that can rely on himself he will need to learn how to read and write. Douglass taught himself some reading and writing and also learned lots of it from young boys in the city. If Douglass never learned how to read or write he would have always been a slave. This shows us Americans, that if we want to succeed in life we got to be committed to our education and should always no matter what try to only rely on ourselves that is the key to self

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His master Auld showed Douglass that literacy was very important. Then Douglass understood that literacy was the way out from slavery to freedom. He knew that the denial of literacy of black man gave the power to the white man to submit them to slavery. The origins of literacy show that even great famous philosophers from the 18th century like “Kant, Hume, Hegel—illiteracy was the basis for arguing that slaves were subhuman, since man’s capacity for reason (as reflected in literacy)”.

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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

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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.

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