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Opposing Views On Frederick Douglas's 'The Columbian Orator'

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a) Mrs. Auld thinks Douglass should be able to read because she teaches him herself. “ My mistress- who had begun to teach me- was suddenly checked in her benevolent design,...”(Douglass 521). The author says that his mistress began to teach him, so this proves what Mrs. Auld thinks about Douglass’s reading.
b) I think that Mrs. Auld is later “violent in her opposition” to Douglass’s reading because her husband gave her strong advice of not teaching Douglass how to read. “ In faithful compliance with this advice, the good lady had not only ceased to instruct me, herself, but had set her face as a flint against my learning to read by any means”(Douglass 521). According to the text, Mrs. Auld ceased to instruct Douglass due to the strong advice …show more content…

a) Douglass buys the Columbian Orator when he is about thirteen years old. “ Fortunately, or unfortunately, about this time in my life, I had made enough money to buy what was then a very popular schoolbook, the Columbian Orator”(Douglass 525). The author says he has made enough money to buy the Columbian Orator, which proves Douglass this is the book he buys when he is about thirteen years old.
b) Douglass transforms from “light-hearted” to “wretched and gloomy” from reading this because it opens his eyes and shows him the evil of slavery. Reading this makes him less naive. “ This knowledge opened my eyes to the horrible pit, and revealed the teeth of the frightful dragon that was ready to pounce upon me, but it opened no way for my escape...I was wretched and gloomy, beyond my ability to describe”(Douglass 526). In this quote, Douglass describes why he transforms from “light-hearted” to “wretched and gloomy” due to him reading the Columbian Orator. 3. a) Douglass’s everlasting thinking consumes him once he obtains this knowledge. “It was this everlasting thinking which distressed and tormented me; and yet there was no getting rid of the subjects of my thoughts”(Douglass 526). According to the text, it proves that Douglass is consumed by his everlasting thinking because he says that it distresses and torments

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Douglass’s descriptions of the slave trade were extremely vivid, from the details of how American’s viewed slaves, to the sounds of whips cracking and how a woman was encumbered by the weight of the child she carried and the chains that she wore. These details would bring readers to know what it was like to be in a slaves shoes at that time. His speech is driven by first had accounts of the degradations of slavery and would not be credible if it wasn’t for this fact. I believe that Douglass’s tone throughout the speech was hopeful, he enforced the cause of the Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society with the hopes of making the United States more complete when slavery ended.

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He does not agree with Mrs. Auld teaching Douglass these new things, because he felt the education ruined slaves and ultimately would make them unhappy and unruly. Although Mr. Auld’s word were quite harsh, Douglass took it as words of enlightenment and vowed to win his freedom

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In his writing, Douglass states, “I was now about twelve years old, and the thought of being a slave for life began to bear heavily upon my heart. Just about this time, I got hold of a books entitled “The Columbian Orator.” Every opportunity I got, I used to read this book. Among much of other interesting matter, I found in it a dialogue between a master and his slave” (Douglass 2). Douglass displays the use of narration in this piece of writing through himself explaining an identified experience he endured.

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Subsequently, after collecting enough money, Douglass buys the Columbian Orator at the age of thirteen. Reading the Columbian Orator transforms Douglass from “light-hearted” (Douglass 526) to “wretched and gloomy” (Douglass 526) by opening his eyes to the true horror of slavery. The author creates a sense of realism and appeals to the ethos of the audience by creating a link of the inevitability of Douglass’ circumstances and what today’s society knows about slavery and its history.

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In this moment, by eavesdropping and allowing the words of his white master to fester in his soul, Douglass came to know how the white man had power over the black man. By knowing the information of what caused his suffering, Douglass easily knew how to reverse the suffering he was facing into the enlightenment that freedom from slavery poses. This is a profound, and thus efficacious, moment in the text of the novel considering the fact that it was the turning point from hopelessness to optimistic aspiration in Douglass’

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“I often found myself regretting my own existence and wishing myself dead; and but for the hope of being free, I have no doubt but that I should have killed myself, or done something for which I should have been killed” (p.121). From his learning, Douglass realized that his life will not be like the men he reads about books. Douglass started to see education as a curse and less of a

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Auld’s wife began to teach Douglass to read. Auld forbade her claiming

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Douglass was so determined to become literate that he learned in so many unorthodox ways that it made him a better thinker, reader, and writer. As a child Douglass got his hands on The Columbian Orator, which instilled an influx of ideas in his mind. Although with the spark the Columbian Orator arisen, Douglass wasn’t able to do much with it because he was unable to create a coherent answer or response to the questions and ideas he had. With the arrival of these thoughts also brought along heartache. He was a prisoner to his own mind, when he learned to read he got a rude awakening by being aware of his situation as a slave.

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At one put when Mrs. Auld wasn’t having a good day. She separated Douglass into a lonely place. Where he doesn’t have a book or anything that has to do with learning. Even sometimes She would send someone to check on him if he is hiding a book or reading something that could be knowledgable. Douglass showed Mrs.Auld slavery and education were incompatible with each other.

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Douglass expresses in his essay, Learning to Read, that he truly realized the depravity of his situation by reading various texts about slavery that presented opposing viewpoints. “Learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. It opened my eyes to the horrible pit” (193). Not only did Douglass’s path to enlightenment awaken him to the degeneracy of slavery and abhor learning how to read, it even prompted him to harbor suicidal thoughts.

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Fredrick Douglass meets Hugh Auld’s wife Sophia and he is surprised about how nice she is. She does not really know how to treat slaves because she has never had them. A slave with education is said to be a dangerous slave so they are not supposed to be taught. However it seems like Mrs. Auld did not know that, and she began to teach Douglass the Alphabet which is a big turning point in Douglass’s life as a slave. Mr. Auld figures out that his wife has been teaching Douglass, and he puts an end to it, and he tells her how dangerous it is to teach a slave.

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In chapter VI Douglass says “Auld, she very kindly commenced to teach me the A, B, C.” This shows the reader that not everyone treated slaves badly. When Mr.Auld found out he said to Mrs.Auld “Now’ he said ‘If you teach a nigger how to read, there would be no keeping him.” This tells the reader that if slaves could read that they could figure out a way to run away. This is stated in

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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

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Imagine our country — a multicultural haven for immigrants seeking refuge — completely bare of asylum seekers. Imagine a country without a varying array of culture, without acceptance of each and every race, without knowledge and appreciation for the arts, ideas, social behaviour, and so forth of other cultures. This concept which would lacerate the deep foundations of which this country is built upon and develop consequences that politicians and citizens have not foreseen. Without the aforementioned multitude of cultural components, the enrichment of this country would be slim. Along with casting aside the culture immigrants bring into Australia, furthermore political and economic dilemmas materialise.

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With this, Douglass is addressing the topic of slavery and whether to abolish it or not. And goes about telling the hardships he went through.

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