Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself Group

Question:

jwtran
jwtran

What connections between education and freedom does Douglass make?

Rate question:

Posted by jwtran on Saturday February 21, 2009 at 8:41 PM and tagged with characters, narrative of the life of frederick douglass, an american slave, written by himself.

Answers:


  1. maldoror Student
    College - Senior

    In Chapter Six, Douglass is staying with the Aulds.  Sophia Auld, initially a kind woman, starts to teach him how to read.  Mr. Auld stops the lessons as soon as he realizes what is going on.  He says that teaching a slave to read would spoil the slave (he doesn't use those exact words...).

    Douglass realizes that since Mr. Auld doesn't want him to learn to read, he determines to do so.  He finds school copy-books and secretly traces the words inside it.  He finds poor white boys and bribes them with bread in order to teach him how to read.  He finds a copy of The Columbian Orator and begins to read it.  The book contains a famous speech between a master and a slave, in which the master lists the reasons that slavery is justified and the slave refutes each and every one.  The speech moves Douglass emotionally.

    After he has learned to read, Douglass realizes that the slaveholders do not teach their slaves to read because it is only then that the slave can realize just how unfair their lot is.  He starts reading abolitionist newspapers.  Douglass experiences an existential crisis because he realizes that while learning to read has set his mind free, he is still a slave, and that he wishes that he were uneducated again, because he believes his plight is worse off than an uneducated slave.

    Rate answer:

    Posted by maldoror on Friday May 8, 2009 at 5:23 PM