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Why Did Frederick Douglass Become Literate

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Frederick Douglass Essay By being persistent, creative and determined Frederick Douglass was able to achieve the impossible by overcoming the odds by the use of unconventional methods to become literate. Frederick Douglass faced a lot of adversities while living with the Hugh’s family. He tried his best to learn as much as he could from whoever he could or from whoever was willing to teach him. Without Frederick Douglass being so persistent his entire life he would have not been able to accomplish his mission to become literate. At the age of twelve, Douglass was being taught the alphabet by his Masters wife, Mrs. Hugh’s. Mr. Hugh’s being vexed by the lessons blatantly said it was inappropriate to teach him. After Douglass had his mind …show more content…

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. Douglass for some time underwent suffering do to the fact that he knew he was a slave and because he knew he could do nothing about it. After this he had wanted to run away to the North where he could find help from the people to free him. But coming to the realization that he was too young to run away he wanted to learn to write. So he spent time down by Durgin and Bailey’s shipyard, there he saw various carpenters writing the letters L, A, S, and F on pieces of wood that had to go to a specific side of a ship. He began to mimic the carpenters and started to write the four letters out. After a while he was able to write the four letters with ease and wanted to learn more. He then later challenged a boy who he knew could write, that he could write just as well as he. So after they had their little showdown, Douglass received many great lessons he would have not been able to receive anywhere else. In the excerpt Douglass says “I continued by copying the advanced spelling words in Webster’s Spelling Book until I could make them all without looking at the book.” He was so determined to be literate he would stop at nothing, he went out of his way to find other means of learning. Douglass would make the

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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

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In the essays, “The Joy of Reading and Writing; Superman and Me” and Frederick Douglass’s “Chapter 7: Learning to Read and Write”, Sherman Alexie and Frederick Douglass write about their hardships and challenges they faced while learning how to read and write due to their social economic status. Despite the fact that Alexie and Douglass are incredibly different people, they both use education for freedom and a sense of self-worth. Alexie and Douglass both struggled to receive education and struggled mentally and physically because of their social economic status. Although, Alexie and Douglass both experienced these hardships, they saw the world through a totally different perspective. Alexie saw the world in a more positive manner than Douglass

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In Frederick Douglass’ passage, “Learning to Read and Write”, his mistress’ decision to halt his education creates an obstacle that he overcomes through creative acts. Ever since Douglass was a child, he was separated from his family to become a slave for life meaning he wasn’t offered an education unless their master wanted to. In Douglass’ case, his master decided to teach him until the purpose of slavery caught up to her, “ the first step in her downward course was in her ceasing to instruct [him]” (17). Without his mistress’ help in instructing him, Douglass didn’t have an obvious opportunity in an education instead, he began to read at any chance given to him. With the urge Frederick Douglass had in wanting to learn and read more, he had

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When Douglass had to run an errand he always to his book with him along with a piece of bread. Due to the white kids that were helping him being poor and hungry he exchanged bread for lesson on how to read and write. Learning allowed him to used these new skills towards helping his people after discovering the word

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Frederick Douglass Rhetorical Analysis Essay In the book the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, written by Frederick Douglass readers are given a walk through of his life dating back to when he was a slave up until the point when he became a free man. Throughout the novel, one of the primary things Douglass attributes his freedom to is education. “Literacy [was his] ticket to freedom from the enslavement of his mind and body.” Learning to read gave Douglas an incentive to seek his freedom.

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1408 Words | 6 Pages

Douglass said reading persistently expanded his mind, but as a result the knowledge tortured him internally, so internally he did not want the knowledge anymore. In the essay Douglass said reading one of the speeches from the “Columbian Orator” told him that the capability of truth won over the inner feeling of the oppressor. Also with the knowledge he gained from the speeches he read was the elimination and discouragement of bondage, and the questioning of if slavery is right or wrong and went against human rights. Douglass, now knowing the truth about slavery and being able to argue against it, felt that slavery was unspeakable. Douglass grew his knowledge, not just because his was hurt by the truth, but at the same time grew anger toward the oppressors that put him in his situation.

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Douglass used literacy to read arguments and compelling points to free his mind of oppression and slavery which lead him to make more professional and better resonating points

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Frederick Douglass, a 19th-century African-American activist for the abolition of slavery, was a slave for first two decades of his life. Consequently, his oppressed position was the main root cause of all obstacles he faced during his early years, as discussed by him in essay “How I Learned to Read and Write”. The first obstacle he witnessed was his inability to read because of his mistress’ attitude who ceased to instruct him and grew to believe that, “Education and slavery were incompatible with each other”. It was an obstacle because young Frederick did not have a teacher who would create a learning program for him, and thus his learning to read became more difficult, and it was rather chaotic and unstructured. However, Douglass overcame

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405 Words | 2 Pages

Through his observations of this work, Douglass managed to learn to write four letters. Another tactic Frederick Douglass used in learning to write was fooling young boys. Douglass would brag to a boy that he could write so much better than he could. This challenge leads to Douglass receiving “many lessons in writing, which…I should never have gotten in any other way” (Douglass 59). Thus, this scheme tremendously added to his ability to write.

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582 Words | 3 Pages

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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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.

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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.

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1727 Words | 7 Pages

With all the knowledge he was gaining, he began to comprehend everything around him. The things he was learning fascinated him, but the “more [he] read, the more [he] was led to abhor and detest [his] enslavers”(Douglass 35); however, that should not be viewed as a negative affect but a positive one. No one should want to be deceived for their entire life. This hatred that he built up motivated him to continue to further educate himself. As a result, he later motivated other slaves to earn an education by having “[availed] themselves to [an] opportunity to learn to read” (Douglass 69) by Douglass teaching them every Sunday.

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836 Words | 4 Pages

Douglass’s master forbade his wife from continuing to teach Douglass the alphabet because his master

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1673 Words | 7 Pages

Douglass is always curious and he never gives up even when he finds several obstacles in his way, because he perfectly knows what his goal is: he needs an education to get his freedom. He is determined to get it even though it requires a lot of hard work. Douglass is sure of the potential of education. As a matter of fact he knows well that knowlegde can change his life while leading him to freedom. Douglass has both the motivation and the determination because he is aware that owing to education he can get to great places in his life, and that education makes the world a better place

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