In 1837, douglass met and fell in love with anna murray, a free black woman in baltimore about five years older than he. While freeland remained complacent about their activities, other plantation owners became incensed about their slaves being educated. One sunday they burst in on the gathering, armed with clubs and stones, to disperse the congregation permanently. This depot was replaced by the historic president street station, constructed it was noted as a site of other slave escapes along one of many routes of the famous underground railroad and during the civil war. Young douglass reached havre de grace, maryland, in harford county, in the northeast corner of the. 3 the exact year is also unknown on the first page of narrative of the life of frederick douglass, an american slave , he stated: i have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any.

In 1833, thomas auld took douglass back from hugh as a means of punishing hugh douglass later wrote. Thomas auld sent douglass to work for edward covey, a poor farmer who had a reputation as a slave breaker. There is scarcely anything in my experience about which i could not give a more persuasive paper topics satisfactory answer. After anthony died, the boy was given to lucretia frederick douglass learning to read and write essay pdf auld, wife of thomas auld, who sent him to serve thomas apos brother hugh auld in baltimore. When douglass was about twelve years old, hugh auld apos s wife sophia started teaching him the alphabet, although maryland state law prohibited teaching slaves to read. Whispered that my master was my father but of the correctness of this opinion i know nothing.

It was common custom, in the part of maryland from which i ran away, to part children from their mothers at a very early age. Find out just what any people will frederick douglass learning to read and write essay pdf quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or. Frederick douglass’ narrative, learning to read and write talked about how he accomplished the feat of becoming a literate individual through the use of self teaching at a young age. Douglass describes the ways in which he enlisted the aid of young children to assist him with his learning. He also went into detail about how his newly acquired abilities had been a curse rather than a blessing. 3 douglass accounted how his ability to read later on assisted him in his succession with learning how to write p.

5 i was able to relate with frederick douglass in how he had minimal help with learning how to read. Being a soldier in the army, i must learn to be an independent individual and acquire knowledge on tasks and drills that would otherwise be unknown to me. The narrative illustrates my personal views of the world, in that learning something new is not always going to be as easy as it seems, and may require additional assistance from other people. Douglass clearly communicated his defined struggle with his journey to learn how to read, and eventually write, after years upon years of personal determination and courage. His dedication to become a more intelligent being and literate person inspires me to better myself as a person and as a soldier. In 1845 frederick douglass published what was to be the first of his three autobiographies: the narrative of the life of frederick douglass, an american slave, written by himself.

As the title suggests, douglass wished not only to highlight the irony that a land founded on freedom would permit slavery to exist within its midst, but also to establish that he, an american slave with no formal education, was the sole author of the work. Written in the years following his 1838 escape from his maryland slaveholder, the narrative reveals numerous instances of douglass's courage on his journey from slave to free man. Douglass himself punctuates this route by sharing with the reader his tenacious and ingenious efforts at learning how to read and write, his risky physical opposition to a nigger breaker, and his escape to new york. These courageous acts pale, however, beside his most overt and possibly dangerous act: the publishing of his autobiography before his freedom had been purchased. Indeed, in 1845 douglass was still legally a slave at any time he could have been betrayed, hunted down, captured and returned to his master who, more than likely, would have sold douglass further down south as punishment.

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It was not until 1847, while douglass was traveling and lecturing in england that friends bought his freedom. For douglass, however, his personal declaration of freedom and independence occurred two years earlier with his narrative. The narrative in itself is remarkable for the views on slavery and slaveholders that douglass bravely presents. First, douglass asserts his humanity in the face of the dehumanizing institution of slavery. In doing so, he sets an example to other slaves to insist upon their humanity, and he persuades his reading audience to acknowledge this humanity, too. He claims as his intellectual birthright the opportunity to learn to read and write.

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He refuses to accept anything less than his own physical, spiritual, and intellectual freedom. Moreover, he never hesitates to criticize directly often with withering irony those who uphold slavery and those who prefer a romanticized version of it. Pitilessly, douglass offers the reader a first hand account of the pain, humiliation and brutality of the south's peculiar institution. Instead, he points out the cruelty and the corrupting influence of power not only on the victim, but also on the perpetrator the slave holder. Lastly, douglass's narrative is a courageous work because it confronts the misuse of christianity in perpetuating the widely held belief in the slave owner's god given right to own or sell other human beings. In this curriculum unit, students will read douglass's narrative with particular attention devoted to chapters 1, 2, 6, 7, 9, and 10.

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They will analyze douglass's vivid first hand accounts of the lives of slaves and the behavior of slave owners to see how he successfully contrasts reality with romanticism and powerfully uses imagery, irony, connotative and denotative language, strong active verbs, repetition, and rhetorical appeals to persuade the reader of slavery's evil. Students will also identify and discuss douglass's acts of physical and intellectual courage on his journey towards freedom. The essay learning to read and write by fredrick douglass is a reminiscent type writing where douglass talks about how he learned to read. So his mistress, the slave master’s wife, taught him to read even though it was forbidden.

The mistress soon stopped for a reason that was never clarified but it was probably because the master found out about douglass learning to read and made his mistress stop teaching him. So to read and write with help from no one, douglass goes to a lumber yard and copies the letters written on the wood and studies them. Another tactic douglass uses is challenging the white children to a writing competition of sorts, where he would write something and the other child had to write something better. The master’s son was also learning to read and write and had a book where he took notes, when the family left douglass alone to clean the house, he sometimes picked up the child’s writing book and copied it so that he may learn more. Learning to read and write was written in 1845, the dialect from that time period had the words ye and thou which mainly replaced the word you.

The word choices in this essay may prove difficult to someone who does not do much reading but personally i had no problems with the vocabulary of this essay. Knowing the definitions of certain words will help if one was to run into those words, also knowing certain words will help one use context clues to further unlock the full meaning of the essay. Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

ignorance as a tool of slavery

douglass rsquo s narrative shows how white slaveholders perpetuate slavery by keeping their slaves ignorant. At the time douglass was writing, many people believed that slavery was a natural state of being.

They believed that blacks were inherently incapable of participating in civil society and thus should be kept as workers for whites. The narrative explains the strategies and procedures by which whites gain and keep power over blacks from their birth onward. Slave owners keep slaves ignorant of basic facts about themselves, such as their birth date or their paternity. This enforced ignorance robs children of their natural sense of individual identity. As slave children grow older, slave owners prevent them from learning how to read and write, as literacy would give them a sense of selfsufficiency and capability. Slaveholders understand that literacy would lead slaves to question the right of whites to keep slaves. Finally, by keeping slaves illiterate, southern slaveholders maintain control over what the rest of america knows about slavery.

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Wendell phillips makes this point in his prefatory letter to the narrative.

knowledge as the path to freedom

just as slave owners keep men and women as slaves by depriving them of knowledge and education, slaves must seek knowledge and education in order to pursue freedom. It is from hugh auld that douglass learns this notion that knowledge must be the way to freedom, as auld forbids his wife to teach douglass how to read and write because education ruins slaves. Douglass sees that auld has unwittingly revealed the strategy by which whites manage to keep blacks as slaves and by which blacks might free themselves. Doug lass presents his own self education as the primary means by which he is able to free himself, and as his greatest tool to work for the freedom of all slaves.