The Unknown is Not Always as Bad as the Known
“Learning to Read and Write,” by Frederick Douglass, is an excerpt from his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. In “Learning to Read and Write” Douglass discusses his experience with learning how to read and write. He begins by stating his immense excitement and eagerness to learn to read and write. He makes friends with the white boys in hope for them to teach him. He successes and does it in a very discrete manner.
Once he learns to read and write he begins to read books such as “The Columbian Orator.” In his reading, he finds himself relating the author’s thoughts and words to his own. “They gave tongue to interesting thoughts of my own soul, which had frequently lashed through my mind, and died away for want of utterance” (par 6). He learned that reading is power and the knowledge he gained from reading begun to make him wish he never was able to read. He begun to hate his enslavers and view them as “robbers, who had left their homes, and in gone to Africa, and stolen [them] from [their] homes, and in a strange way reduced [them] to slavery” (par.6). Douglass begins to perceive himself as a beast, and envying his fellow-slaves for their ignorance, in reguards to reading and writing.
“Learning to Read and Write,” is a very relatable piece of literature. There is always something that one does not know and desires to know, but sometimes when learned, one finds it was best to never have learned it at all. When Douglass was unable to read and write he knew of no written stories about slaves and their masters. Once he entered the world of literature and was able to comprehend the writing it changed his perspective of his slaveholders.
Sometimes things in life are not meant to be experienced or found out about until later. I am not stating that Douglass should not have learned how to read and write. I am stating that he worked so hard and diligent to learn how to do something that he thought would make him happy, when it really just made him hate himself and his slave-owners.
So I guess the saying is true, sometimes “Ignorance is bliss,” what do you think?
2 comments:
I think that ignorance is bliss as long as you don’t know that you are ignorant. There is a huge difference between not knowing and knowing you don’t know. If I found out that there was something about me that I didn’t know I would want to know it, but if I didn’t know that I didn’t know it then what is the point of telling me. I know that is confusing but if you read it slow it will make sense.
It does seem as if ignorance is bliss in a lot of cases. But was it really better that Douglass he was ignorant to his situation? Is it not better that he know so that he could change his situation?
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