Learning to Read and Write Essays

Picture this going through life without the ability to read or write. Without these abilities, it is impossible for a person to be a functioning member of society. In addition, imagine that someone is purposely limiting your knowledge to keep a leash on your independence. Not only is an American slave raised without skills in literacy, he cannot be taught to read unless someone breaks the law. In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, the reader is given a detailed explanation of why slave masters keep their slaves ignorant and the effects such a strategy has on the slaves’ lives. In his autobiography, Douglass describes how the knowledge he obtains has substantial positive and negative effects on his psyche. He is given renewed passion and hope for freedom while struggling with the burden of enlightenment of his situation. Ultimately, however, education shapes his fate, and he achieves freedom and prominence as an advocate for abolition.

Education is something that is often taken for granted in this day and age. Kids these days rebel against going to school all together. In the essays “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me” by Sherman Alexie and “Learning to Read and Write” by Frederick Douglass, we learn of two young men eager for knowledge. Both men being minors and growing up in a time many years apart, felt like taking how to read and write into their own hands, and did so with passion. On the road to a education, both Alexie and Douglass discover that education is not only pleasurable, but also painful. Alexie and Douglass both grew up in different times, in different environments, and in different worlds. They both faced different struggles and had different achievements, but they were not all that different. Even though they grew up in different times they both had the same views on how important of education was. They both saw education as freedom and as a way of self-worth even though they achieved their education in different ways. They both had a strong mind and a strong of sense of self-motivation.

During the 1800s, slaves received treatment comparable to that of livestock. They were mere possessions of white men stripped of almost every last bit of humanity in them. African-Americans were constricted to this state of mind by their owners vicious treatment, but also the practice of keeping them uneducated. Keeping the slaves illiterate hindered them from understanding the world around them. Slave owners knew this. The slaves who were able to read and write always rebelled more against their masters. Frederick Douglass, author of "A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass," and Harriet Jacobs, author of "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl," were prime examples. Both slaves had been taught how read and write at a young

In the narrative excerpt “Learning to Read and Write” (1845), which originally came from the autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass recapitulates his journey into the coming of literacy that shifts his point to how slavery really is. Douglass develops and supports his main idea by providing a flashback of his own experience as a slave learning to read and write and through dialogue with rhetorical appeals, such as ethos, pathos, and logos. Douglass’ apparent purpose is to retell his story of the obstacles he faced to finally become a free man to guide and prompt other fellow slaves to finally take action for their freedom; he also wants to establish a foundation in which people of higher power, such as abolitionists, are more aware of the slavery situation. The intended audience for this excerpt is the general public of the time consisting of fellow slaves, slave owners, and abolitionists; the relationship Douglass establishes with the audience is equivalent to a news reporter and the people receiving the message—he exposes the truth to them.

“It should not be possible to treat a slave with Christian fairness and instruct him in the Christian faith as a just substitute for his pagan practices, without mollifying the relationship between master and slave. It has to be. Otherwise Christianity would not be able to spread. Otherwise the African would be deemed our equal simply because he shared out faith in one God and the Afterlife. We both know of the above to be false because of the evidence of how Africans live in their Primitive Land.” (p.111)

In The Life of Frederick Douglass An American Slave, written by himself the author asserts that the way to enslave someone is to keep them from learning at all. Douglass supports his claim by, first, when Frederick was small he was never able to tell his age or the date, and secondly, they were never allowed to be taught how to read that was something always hidden from him as a young child. The author’s purpose is to inform the reader that as a slave there were so many things they were not allowed to have that we may take for granted, in order to make it very clear that we should not take our education and opportunities for granted. Based on The Life Of Frederick Douglass An American Slave, Douglass is writing for the white people who believed that slavery was right, he wanted to make it very clear that the slaves and Douglass had nothing handed to them.

In "Learning to Read and Write" written by Frederick Douglass, he talks about his experience of teaching himself how to read and write as a slave boy living in Master Hugh's house where his mistress educated him. However, she was dictated by her husband and the instructions given to the slaves on how to read had to stop; in order for Douglass to teach himself, he obtained a book about slavery, The Columbian Orator and read the book every free second he had. Encouraged by the book, Douglass runs away to the north from his master for freedom. Douglass' main ideas include depravity, chattel, and an emancipation, which represents a moral corruption, the slave properties, and an act of freeing someone from slavery, respectively.

Christianity provided African American slaves with hope, because although they were suffering as merely human instruments of work, God was watching them and all of theirs suffering would be rewarded by him. “Slavery, with all its

Ron Padgett, the author of Creative Reading, recalls how he learned to read and write as though these things happened yesterday. Like Padgett, I tried recalling my reading and writing history.

Frederick Douglass effectively persuades his audience to show the crucial need for learning to read and write and to inform how slavery was a true

In the excerpt “Learning to Read and Write”, Frederick Douglass talks about his experiences in slavery living in his masters house and his struggle to learn how to read and write. Frederick Douglass was an African American social reformer, orator, writer, and statesman. Some of his other writings include “The Heroic Slave”, “My Bondage and My Freedom”, and “Life and Times of Frederick Douglass”. In this excerpt, Frederick Douglass uses an empathic tone, imagery, certain verb choice, contrast, and metaphors to inform African Americans of how important it is to learn to read and write and also to inform a white American audience of the evils of slavery. I find Frederick Douglass to

Douglass was motivated to learn how to read by hearing his master condemn the education of slaves. Mr. Auld declared that an education would “spoil” him and “forever unfit him to be a slave” (2054). He believed that the ability to read makes a slave “unmanageable” and “discontented” (2054). Douglass discovered that the “white man’s power to enslave the black man” (2054) was in his literacy and education. As long as the

Douglass’s escape from slavery and eventual freedom are inseparable from his movingly narrated attainment of literacy. Douglass saw slavery as a

Frederick Douglas was born into the slave trade in Talbot County, Maryland. He was sent to work on a plantation for the Hugh’s Family for about seven years. This is the location where his learning truly began. His mistress was a “kind, tender-hearted, woman” who treated Frederick as a human instead of property the family owned. This was a dangerous thing for both parties at this time in history it was considered wrong. Frederick States “Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me” which I see the connection he had made to her change of personality because of slavery. She had heavenly qualities that slavery was able to divest from her. It was injurious to Fredrick not only for the lashings a salve would

In a Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave written by himself, the author argues that no one can be enslaved if he or she has the ability to read, write, and think. Douglass supports his claim by first providing details of his attempts to earn an education, and secondly by explaining the conversion of a single slaveholder. The author’s purpose is to reveal the evils of slavery to the wider public in order to gain support for the abolition of his terrifying practice. Based on the purpose of writing the book and the graphic detail of his stories, Douglass is writing to influence people of higher power, such as abolitionists, to abolish the appalling reality of slavery; developing a sympathetic relationship with the