ipl-logo

Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass Essay

2174 Words9 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Frederick douglass life as an abolitionist

As the agriculture production was in great demand in America, white men used indentured servant to cheaply produce the products they needed. However, during this time, slaves started to become more common than indentured servants because, “As Africans, they could not claim the protections of English common law. Slaves’ terms of service never expired…” (Foner, p. 80). This made white men desire to have slaves who they could control and treat however they pleased for however long they wanted. Taking a look at The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, it is easy to see the harsh conditions that slaves, especially Frederick Douglass, encountered during this era. Douglass’ writing also reveals how female slaves were treated differently than …show more content…

Before moving to Baltimore to live with Mr. and Mrs. Auld, Frederick Douglass had no sense of how to read or write and he did not have an eagerness to learn. Once he was living in Baltimore, Mrs. Auld, a free white women who seemed to be free of the evils of slavery, was very kind and she started to teach Frederick the alphabet and other small words, which is an example of how Mrs. Auld was very different from other white women of her time. However, once her husband found out what his wife was doing, he immediately put a stop to it. Mr. Auld said, that if she would teach slaves to read, “There will be no keeping him” (Douglass, p. 42). Upon learning to read small words from Mrs. Auld, a fire was set in Frederick that gave him hope and determination to continue learning, no matter the consequences. While still living in Baltimore, Frederick continued to development new ways to learn to read. One strategy he used, was making friends with white boys who he would meet when running errands for his master. He would often give them bread and in return, they would give him “bread of knowledge” (Douglass, p. 49). This exchange helped Frederick Douglass succeed in learning to read, which increased the hope in his heart that he would one day be a free

Show More
Related
980 Words | 4 Pages

“She now commenced to practice her husband’s precepts. She finally became even more violent in her opposition than her husband himself.” (pg.29-31, p.104) Frederick Douglass then found any way to learn to improve his literacy. When he was sent to do errands, he always took a book with him. He would also bring a piece of bread with him.

Read More
260 Words | 2 Pages

In his letter, Frederick Douglass take hold on the effect of concrete imagery, syntax, and formal diction to not only demonstrate his experience of learning how to read and write as a slave; but also to inform the audiences the importance of learning and the malevolent face of slavery. Frederick Douglass’s concrete imagery, such as “thus after a long years, I finally succeed in learning how to write.” (page 128), and “they gave tongue to interesting thought of my own soul, which I frequently lashed through my mind and died away for want of utterance.” (page 127); underscore how important learning is to Frederick Douglass. “they gave tongue to interesting thought of my own soul, which I frequently lashed through my mind and died away for want

Read More
233 Words | 1 Pages

According to Frederick Douglass and Amy Tan literacy and language can allow one to express our inner thoughts. Frederick Douglass continued to learn even besides opposition because he had been taught the alphabet and he was curious and wanted to learn more and more. Frederick Douglass learned how to read by exchanging bread for knowledge to the little white boys when he had the opportunity. He learned how to write by being in Durgin and Bailey’s ship yard and watching the carpenters and mimicking the letters and also by copying the content that master thomas had written. .After douglass learns how to read he begins to really think more about his inner thoughts and he began to discover the truth of what was happening around that time.

Read More
285 Words | 2 Pages

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.

Read More
1299 Words | 6 Pages

This was a feat that now only grew their want for knowledge, but also grew the want for freedom. When Mrs. Auld taught Douglass to write her husband interrupted and conveyed the common belief that teaching a slave to read would ruin him or her. “If you teach that nigger how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master,” Douglass quoted his livid master (Douglass 1196.)

Read More
1080 Words | 5 Pages

Frederick Douglass, an eminent human rights leader in the anti-slavery movement, advises high official officers on a range of causes: women’s rights, anti-slavery, and Irish home rule. Before gaining freedom, he acquired the ideological opposition to slavery from reading newspapers and political writings even with the defying ban of literacy for slaves. After a anti-slavery lecturer, William Garrison, urged Douglass, he wrote his first narrative, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, a thought-provoking memoir portraying the hardships of slavery. He vividly illustrated the institution of slavery and its destructive force effectively through the use of imagery and biblical allusions. Comparably, Mary Wollstonecraft,

Read More
498 Words | 2 Pages

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.

Read More
805 Words | 4 Pages

It would be unfit for him to be a slave.” After Frederick learning how to read opened more opportunities for him, but him couldn’t let the white man find

Read More
793 Words | 4 Pages

Education Determines Your Destination Education is the light at the end of the tunnel, when Frederick uses it he discovers hope. In the story the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick goes through many struggles on his path to freedom, showing us the road from slavery to freedom. At the beginning of the book, Douglass is a slave in both body and mind. When the book ends, he gets both his legal freedom and frees his mind. The path to freedom was not easy, but it got clearer when he got an education.

Read More
392 Words | 2 Pages

African-American slaves were forbidden to obtain the knowledge of being able to read or write, stemming from the fear of white masters that educated slaves will overpower them. Douglass managed to learn to read by bribing poor and hungry white boys into teaching him in exchange for bits of bread. Douglass illustrates his thirst for literacy through “[The] bread [he] used to bestow upon the hungry little urchins, who, in return, would give [him] that more valuable bread of knowledge” (pg 23). This reveals how much Douglass valued education and took advantage of all the knowledge he had access to. Today’s youth, especially the ones belonging to a minority

Read More
521 Words | 3 Pages

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.

Read More
560 Words | 3 Pages

“Learning to Read and Write” by Frederick Douglass is a personal narrative which describes a specific time in his childhood when he was learning to read and write. Born as a slave in the pre-Civil War south, Douglass was not expected to be literate. However, through strong ambition, Douglass overcame restrictions and stereotypes placed on slaves and taught himself to read and write. Later in his life, Frederick Douglass wrote down this story in his book Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass in 1845. Today, students and adults can enjoy this narrative on how he overcame the struggles of learning how to read and write.

Read More
973 Words | 4 Pages

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is Frederick Douglass’s autobiography in which Douglass goes into detail about growing up as a slave and then escaping for a better life. During the early-to-mid 1800s, the period that this book was written, African-American slaves were no more than workers for their masters. Frederick Douglass recounts not only his personal life experiences but also the experiences of his fellow slaves during the period. This book was aimed at abolitionists, so he makes a point to portray the slaves as actual living people, not the inhuman beings that they are treated as. In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, slaves are inhumanly represented by their owners and Frederick Douglass shines a positive light

Read More
86 Words | 1 Pages

Frederick was sent to Baltimore’s home of Hugh Auld. This is where he got his skills to read and write, even though there were laws against teaching slaves how to read and write. Frederick was taught the alphabet when he was just 12 years old and learned from other white children in neighborhood. It was through the power of reading that he saw and started to appose the idea of slavery.

Read More
1673 Words | 7 Pages

However, literacy turns out to be not only bliss, but also painful. Indeed, while learning to read Frederick becomes more and more aware of the injustices of slavery, and this leads him to regret this knowledge “Learning how to read had become a curse rather than a blessing” ( Douglass ) . Douglass believes in the importance of education. He thinks that education is a key part to our life; it is the only way to get freedom. Literacy is very powerful because it can set anyone free to pursue dreams.

Read More

More about Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass Essay

Open Document