Why Is Frederick Douglass Taking Valuable Lessons

When hearing the word risk, do you imagine an opportunity for things to go wrong, or the opportunity to learn, grow, and thrive? Though risk-taking may seem harmful and dangerous, it is key to helping the world learn valuable lessons. Sure, it may seem hard to imagine risks like asking someone out, presenting something, or confessing something having a good outcome. That is because they are small risks, though lessons can be learned from them as well. The texts, "Address to the Nation on the Explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, and the “Vanishing Island." all portray the act of taking risks -and their outcomes- in different ways, but their authors all show how lessons have

Douglass was born a slave, so he could not get any sort of education. He really was interested in learning how to read, which his mistress was attempting to teach him. It worked for a little while, until her husband forbade her from teaching Frederick, so he tried to learn on his own. This didn’t work either, though because the mistress would become so angry with him, and he would get in trouble. He said, “I have had her rush at me with a face made of fury, and snatch me from a newspaper, in a manner that fully revealed her apprehension.” Young Frederick, still determined to learn to read, resorted to trickery. Douglass said that he would trick the white boys in his neighborhood by giving him food. He slowly learned to read. Knowing how to read also made Douglass feel negatively about himself. He said, “Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever. It was heard in every sound, and seen in every thing. It was ever present to torment me with a sense of my wretched condition. I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling it. It looked from every star, it smiled in every calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm.” He explained that the thought of having knowledge and literacy

This article explains how the tribe’s island is slowly eroding away, and they need to relocate in order to preserve their cultural identities. Many members of the tribe are troubled by this decision because they don’t want to leave the only home they’ve ever known for years and go somewhere new. This obviously doesn’t make them feel very ecstatic. This risk has some pros and some cons. The positive things that could happen are every tribe member being safe, with new homes, and the culture still being alive for younger generations. The cons are that the tribe has established homes on the island, and have been thriving, so they don’t want to leave their homes behind. A member of the tribe says, ""'Some elders don't want to give up what they remember, what they hold onto, but their grandchildren, they would love to see another future for them. They want to save the family values and the culture so that the younger generation can experience what they experienced."” This shows how unsure the tribe is about this, but the reasons that they should go through with the relocation. The outcome of this decision is unknown, but the tribe is taking a risk either way. Stay on the island, and risk everything being wiped away, or relocate and risk leaving your home? The author goes