Analysis Of Learning To Read And Write By Frederick Douglass

Choices (Draft) All humans are created equally and are born with free will. Every person has the natural right to be the author of their life, meaning that they can make their own choices and pursue their dreams. Nevertheless, humans bent nature to their will by adopting slavery, a practice in which humans are owned and are brutally forced to work. In the excerpt “Learning to Read and Write,” Frederick Douglass masters the literacy skills he needed to fulfill his role as an abolitionist, bringing an end to slavery (Douglass 100). Throughout his piece, he addressed many important concepts such as that reading is power but also a curse (Douglass 100). His main objective was to prove his point that our environment doesn’t …show more content…
The same way Douglass’s racist society didn’t make him illiterate, it didn’t define his ability to write or any aspect of his character. (Douglass 104-105). For example, according to the text “Learning to Read and Write,” Douglass went to Durgin and Burkley’s shipyard and watched ship carpenters tag each piece of timber with a letter to teach himself the letters of the alphabet (Douglass 104-105). “[He] immediately commenced copying them, and in a short time, was able to make four letters named” (Douglass 105). That is to say that Douglass proved his point by showing how brave he was though whites were strict against the educating of blacks. He also met a boy who could write and competed over who knew more letters in order to teach himself more alphabets (Douglass 105). This suggests that Douglass tried to proved his point by showing how clever he was though society treated blacks as if they were inferior (Douglass 105). In addition, Douglass “commenced and continued copying the Italics in Webster’s Spelling Book [on a hard surface using chalk], until [he] could make them all without looking on the book” (Douglass 105). When Douglass was left in Master Thomas’s house, he copied what he wrote onto his copy-book until he could write as …show more content…
For example, in the book Douglass was reading “The Columbian Orator,” there was a dialogue that suggests a person’s overall identity (Douglass 102). In the story, after a slave was caught running away from his master the third time, the slave began to say unexpectedly smart yet admirable things (Douglas 102). It led to “the voluntary emancipation of the slave on the part of the master” (Douglass 102). Namely, this means that the author tried to establish the point that our circumstances don’t make us who we are by showing how the slave in the story disregarded society’s racial boundaries and became a free man (Douglass 102). In addition, in the prologue of the excerpt, “Douglass was born a slave in 1818 in Maryland. [But] he learned to read and write, escaped to New York, and became a leader in the abolitionist movement” (Douglass 100). This means that Douglass tried to proved his point by showing that he wasn’t truly a slave just because he was born into slavery (Douglass 100). As an abolitionist, Douglass participated in speaking tours and published the North Star, a newspaper that guided southern slaves to the north for freedom. In other words, Douglass attempted to prove his point that our environment doesn’t define us by showing how he wasn’t truly a slave just because society had him born into slavery (Douglass 100). When