Frederick Douglas: Learning to Read and Write Essay

Introduction

When Frederick Douglas finally learned how to read and write, it was as if a whole new world was opened to him but instead of the joy of learning, he discovered a profound sadness upon realizing that he ought to be free and yet he was not. Learning to read and write was Douglas’ ticket out of slavery but this is not the main point of the story, it was the process of learning that opened his eyes to slavery in America and its negative impact to both slave and free. In other words the discussion about the process of learning to read and write was the framework that he used to illustrate what slavery is all about.

Main body

For many Americans in the early 19^th century, reading and writing are indispensable tools that will help a person become the best that he could be. Learning this skill is a privilege that should have been open to everyone. The unwritten rule that slaves must remain ignorant for the rest of their lives created a hunger in Douglas to know more than merely to read and write. Yet, he would not have known about the true evil of slavery if his former master and mistress did not oppose vehemently to his education. Their insistence that young Frederick Douglas should only exist as a mere resource to be exploited awakened in him the passion to understand why he is a slave and why there are people above him who continue to harass him and his kind. It was as if all of a sudden he was placed in a different vantage point. He saw something that both black and white failed to see.

Douglas did not simply describe slavery as evil. He created a backdrop for this ideas so that the people in America will come to fully understand slavery, that it is not an institution established for the good of all but a system created to benefit a few. One of his most effective strategy was to not only to describe the pitiful state of the African-American slaves but he also pointed out that the slave masters deserve the same pity because they too were affected by the evil forces at work within this system.

Using metaphors, Douglas described the transformation of a nice lady into someone more terrible than a taskmaster. Douglas wrote about his former mistress with affection but he could not hide the fact that she was no longer the same person and Douglas, talking about the evil operating within slavery, made the following remark, “Under its influence, the tender heart became stone, and the lamblike disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness” (p. 1077). Without a doubt this statement was intended to attract the interest of the abolitionist as well as to provoke the white people to reconsider slavery.

It was a masterstroke of brilliance on the part of Douglas. If he simply decided to write about the suffering of the slaves in the South he could only expect the empathy of African-Americans. But when he revealed the negative impact of slavery, by referring to his former mistress and then uttering the famous statement, “Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me” Douglas succeeded in rousing the sympathy of his readers both black and white. But more importantly he forced slave holders in the South to reconsider slavery or at least how they treat their slaves.

It is also interesting how he developed the platform from which he would launch his attack against slavery. It started innocently enough, as if he was merely talking about reading and writing and the obvious reasons why slave masters will not allow their slaves to know more than the skill to do manual labor. But it is the denial of this basic right to learn and to think that started the discussion. Douglas was very much aware about the necessary knowledge required before Northerners will begin to pour out overwhelming support towards abolition. Douglas had to make them understand why it is imperative that slavery must end. It was as if he turned tables against the slaveholders and made them realize that it is not the slaves who were ignorant, it was also their masters. They were ignorant of the fact that slavery is not a good thing for them.

Douglas was also very much aware that he could not afford to describe slavery in abstract terms and use words like suffering and cruelty haphazardly. This means that he cannot simply make general statements because his audience, the influential people in the North will simply consider him as nothing more than a runaway slave eager to make a mountain out of a molehill. Douglas had to use something that they could understand and because he was targeting the educated members of society he appealed to them through the story that slaves never had the chance to read and write.

At first glance the story seems to be straightforward. A slave learned the art of reading and writing and then used this skill to escape. But a closer examination of the narrative will reveal that Douglas was a master communicator who understood the power of a good story. He had the right ingredients to create one spellbinding tale because he was a former slave who had something to say about the most controversial issue at that period in American history. Douglas was not simply saying that it was his ability to read and write that rescued him and allowed him to escape. It was the process of learning how to read and write that made Douglas fully understand the negative impact of slavery both to slave owners and their slaves.