The Road to Freedom
In his excerpt “Learning to Read and Write”, Public speaker, editor, author and former slave, Frederick Douglass, recounts his path to learning how to read and write in order to escape to the north to be a freed man. In order to convey his strong emotions of helplessness and loathing, Douglass effectively uses metaphor and references to animals to convince abolitionists to sympathize with his situation.
Douglass begins his narrative by recounting the instruction from his mistress to teach him how to read and write. The words used to describe the transition of his mistress after her “training in the exercise of irresponsible power” (Douglass 100) inject a fear like prey has to predator to appeal to the intense emotions of …show more content…
He starts to talk about how he felt like he would never be free; that learning to read has opened a whole inside of him that cannot be filled with anything other than freedom. From that point on freedom was all he could think about. He uses the word “tormented” more than once to describe his condition. At one point he considers ending his life just to be rid of his thoughts on freedom. Douglass writes “It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but no ladder upon which to get out.” Douglass uses this metaphor to evoke the same helpless emotion from his audience that he felt.
Considering Frederick Douglass’ feelings of helplessness, the fictional movie “Django Unchained” has a song called “Freedom” sang by Anthony Hamilton and Elayna Boynton about the journey of becoming free. The lyrics from “Freedom” state “I am looking for freedom...And to find it may take everything I have! Not giving up has always been hard, but if I do things the easy way I won’t get far.” These metaphors reference that no matter what, freedom is worth fighting for. Douglass goes through these same emotions throughout the
In his excerpt “Learning to Read and Write”, Public speaker, editor, author and former slave, Frederick Douglass, recounts his path to learning how to read and write in order to escape to the north to be a freed man. In order to convey his strong emotions of helplessness and loathing, Douglass effectively uses metaphor and references to animals to convince abolitionists to sympathize with his situation.
Douglass begins his narrative by recounting the instruction from his mistress to teach him how to read and write. The words used to describe the transition of his mistress after her “training in the exercise of irresponsible power” (Douglass 100) inject a fear like prey has to predator to appeal to the intense emotions of …show more content…
He starts to talk about how he felt like he would never be free; that learning to read has opened a whole inside of him that cannot be filled with anything other than freedom. From that point on freedom was all he could think about. He uses the word “tormented” more than once to describe his condition. At one point he considers ending his life just to be rid of his thoughts on freedom. Douglass writes “It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but no ladder upon which to get out.” Douglass uses this metaphor to evoke the same helpless emotion from his audience that he felt.
Considering Frederick Douglass’ feelings of helplessness, the fictional movie “Django Unchained” has a song called “Freedom” sang by Anthony Hamilton and Elayna Boynton about the journey of becoming free. The lyrics from “Freedom” state “I am looking for freedom...And to find it may take everything I have! Not giving up has always been hard, but if I do things the easy way I won’t get far.” These metaphors reference that no matter what, freedom is worth fighting for. Douglass goes through these same emotions throughout the