frederick douglas assignment #4 to be graded

While reading the narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass many thoughts and feelings went through my head. Feelings of sorrow, joy, and disbelief. The one thing that caught my attention and kept it throughout, was Douglass's drive to learn how to read and write. Mrs. Auld one of Douglass's mistresses taught him his A B C's first, then assisted him in learning to spell words with three or four letters. Once Mr. Auld finds out he forbade his wife teaching and tells her "that it is unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read". " A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master - to do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world". This statement made Douglass mad and from that point on it made him want to learn to read. I think this was the inspiration for him not to give up. Douglass knew that this was a key to his freedom. " To wit, the white man's power to enslave the black man." I believe he also understood that knowledge is power. After being forbade to teach Douglass his mistress started to understand what her husband was saying " the evil consequences of giving instruction", she began to change from a kind woman with a tender heart to a woman with a heart of stone. This did not detour Douglass from wanting to learn. " Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at what ever cost of trouble, to learn how to read".
Douglass had came up with many different ways to use the world and people around him to further his own education of reading and writing. He would read newspapers, befriend little white boys who he met in the streets and learned from them. " The plan which I adopted, and the one by which I was most successful, was that of making friends of all the little white boys whom I met in the street. As many of these as I could, I converted into teachers." While running errands he would take his book with him hoping to finish his errands so he could get a lesson in before he returned home. Douglass would also take bread from the house to trade for knowledge with less fortunate white children in the neighborhood. Douglass was very smart when it came to learning how to read without an instructor, and was just as clever when it came to learning how to write. Imagine if all slaves had been given this knowledge.