Rhetorical Analysis Of Learning To Read And Write Frederick Douglass

For 245 years there was slavery in america. White and black, owners and slaves, divided by race.” Learning to Read and Write” by Frederick Douglass takes place in the mid 1820’s when slavery was at its peak. This story starts off talking about how he views his Mistress as a kind, christian lady, until he tries to read. if he was caught reading he would get strongly reprimanded. He made friends with the the nearby kids and asked them to teach him to read one sentence at a time, over a period of time he accomplished learning to read. Once he learned to read it opened doors in his head that he did not like so much. it opened his mind to ideas of freedom and adventure that made him resent his masters and the world around him for holding him captive …show more content…
Douglas wrote this story to give us some insight into how much knowledge can bring someone power and set their mind free, while his thesis being learning to read and write. It is amazing to think that this high level story was written by a former slave that taught himself how to read and write. It does not directly say who is the targeted audience but how it is written and the level of vocabulary makes it seem like it is targeted for a generally educated audience. This story is structured in long paragraphs that sometimes take up whole pages. In some ways it he is very persuasive when he is talking about slavery or his owners because he is very descriptive when it comes to describing feelings or people but, in my opinion when he is explaining how he learned how to read and write he kind of losses the feeling and just explained what happened which can cost him merit. although, this story still has a great deal of evidence that supports his thesis, like when he explains learning to write at the shipping yard and learning to read from the poor white children. Education was what Douglas was striving for and along the way he found power and