The Day I Saved A Life, Learning To Read And The Narrative Of Life

Risks always have different outcomes

People take risks every single day, even when they don’t realize it. Risks can be small or big, but they all have something in common. People never know how risks will turn out. When people take risks, they will lose something important. In the texts “The day I saved a life,” “Learning to Read,” and the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, are examples of people taking risks. Even though all 3 texts have different outcomes, they all teach a valuable lesson.

Risks can change someone’s life forever. For example, in the text, “The day I saved a life,” a 12-year-old boy named Thomas Ponce saved a shark's life, which had then changed his life forever. It was December 16th, 2011,

In the poem Learning to Read. The author Frances Ellen Watkins Harper took and described a major risk that she took to escape slavery and become a free woman. In the poem, they denied her an education because she was a slave. When Harper was enslaved, she and Uncle Caldwell took major risks. They would steal books, they would learn, and they would hide their books from their master. In lines 13-16, Harper talks about the risks that Uncle Caldwell had made. “I remember Uncle Caldwell/Who took pot liquor fat/And greased the pages of his book/And hid it in his hat.” The reason that he did this was so that he could try to learn knowledge. They always denied enslaved people an education because “Knowledge didn’t agree with slavery-/’Twould make us all too wise” lines 7-8 said. The masters thought that knowledge didn’t work well with slavery and thought that if the slaves would know knowledge, then it would make them too wise and maybe cause them to escape. However, Harper and Uncle Caldwell did not agree with this, and took a risk and try to gain knowledge. During their time in slavery, they had learned to read and write on their own. In lines 29-36 it says, “And I longed to read my bible/For precious words it said; /But when I learned it,/Folks just took their heads,/And said there is no use trying/Oh! Chloe, you're too late; /But as I was rising sixty,/I had no time to wait/” Harper was almost sixty before she had learned how

Douglass was born into slavery and was denied an education. When Douglass was young, the mistress had taught Douglass how to read until her husband found out and told her she had to stop. She then became furious and violent when Douglass was learning on his own. In paragraph 2 Douglass said, "I have had her rush at me with a face made all up of fury, and snatch from me a newspaper, In a manner that fully revealed her apprehension.” Douglass knew that if he learned how to read, there would be major consequences from the mistress and the master, but he knew that knowledge was worth taking a risk. When Douglass was sent to get errands, he took his book and bread with him. He had found little white boys in the street and he would give them bread and in return they would teach him to read. In paragraph 4, he says, “This bread I used to give upon the hungry little urchins, who, in return, would give me that more valuable bread of knowledge.” In this sentence, Douglass is comparing the bread to knowledge. For instance, the little white boys need bread to survive, and for Douglass, he needs the knowledge to escape slavery and become free. Douglass had then used his knowledge as a plan to escape slavery and be free.. “I looked forward to a time at which it would be safe for me to escape,” Douglass said in paragraph 8. Douglass