Growing Up as a Slave
In his essay “Learning to Read and Write” Frederick Douglass explains how growing up as a slave, deprived him from a normal upbringing. Douglass, a young African American child, a slave in a white Americans home, grew up serving his master and mistress.
Douglas explains in his essay how slaves were forbidden to read and write. He describes how on many occasions he would try to read his masters newspaper which would be sometimes left around the house. In his attempt to read, he would be quickly interrupted by his mistress who would aggressive snatch the newspaper from his hands. Clearly the mistress does not want Douglass learning about society. From Douglass’s experience it is obvious slaves were treat like garbage. Even though Douglass had comforts such as food and water, he was deprived from learning the basic knowledge of society. People did not want their slaves gaining knowledge. People did not want their slaves to understand that it is a much larger world with lots of opportunities for people. No, instead, they kept the world secret and hidden.
From this essay, it is understandable that people of Frederick Douglass’s time were greedy and selfish. People would take for granted the lack of knowledge in people and use it as they please. Personally, I see that as an act against humanity and the right to live freely. Can you imaging if slavery still occurred in the American society today?
From Douglass’s essay, you can learn how much the American society has developed into what it is today. Today, there is no such thing as slavery. Education is available in every street corner. People do not have to go to the extreme, where they have to teach themselves how to read and write. They can simply pick it up from their next door neighbor. People of society in Douglass’s essay did not have this luxury; they had to work for their freedom which then allowed them to gain knowledge. In this essay Douglass has not only shared his personal experience and the trouble he went through to learn, he has also taught a very important lesson in American history and slavery.
3 comments:
Jamie, I think the main reason masters did not want their slaves to learn to read and write was simply because the slaves could use it against them. Reading the newspaper, for example, would help them gain knowledge about the society around them and how other people lived who were not slaves. They would be able to escape and have thier own life if they were educated in anyway. Many of these slaves lived in slavery the majority of their life and didn't know what it was like to not be ensalved; therefore, the master's wanted to keep it that way, which was in their best interest.
I agree with Lauren in that the masters did not want their slaves to learn and write because they would lose their advantage over their slaves. If their slaves were able to read they would more easily find about how others thought about slavery and what was trying to be done about it. Being able to read would give them many ideas about how they should be treated and they would no longer accept their lives as slaves.
Thank you for your comments. What you have said is true, and I did try and explain this in the post. After reading your comments and reading over my post again, I see that I explained what was going on but didn’t really say why they done this. So I thank you once again for making me realize what I done wrong in my post.
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