Compare And Contrast What's Your Name Girl By Frederick Douglass

Slavery vs. Freedom
In the beginning of human enslavement abolitionism was not enough to end slavery in many people’s lives in the years (1619 – 1865). Maya Angelou says about the narrator from “What’s Your Name Girl?” it only seem like Margaret wants freedom from her mistress because she felt she was being kept to do white people’s work and duties. She did not like being mistreated all the time by her mistress because of her skin color. Fredrick Douglass on “Learning How to Read and Write” his mistress was overcompensating by following her husband’s commands on ceasing instructions for Douglass on learning how to read and write. He only wanted eternal liberty and freedom from his captivity. Both narrators Margaret and Douglass feel they
don’t have privileges on learning how to read, write or have freedom because of their skin color.
The story unfolds further in “What’s Your Name Girl?” Margaret a black lady employed by a white family narrates her encounters and complications with her mistress. Margaret is always complaining about her mistreatment by Mrs. Cullinan and smart remarks because of her color. Her mood changes from a full contempt to an anger mild tone. She was another slave for the Cullinan family, “After I set the tray down and turned towards the kitchen, one of the women asked, “What’s your name, girl?” It was the speckled face one. Mrs. Cullinan said, “She doesn’t talk much. Her name’s Margaret.” “Is she dumb?” Miss glory would tell Margaret to pay no attention to them. “Don’t mind, don’t pay that no mind. Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words… You know, I been working for her for twenty years.”
Margaret detests her mistress so much after being mistreated, talked about and changing her name. “White folks were so strange. Could they be talking about me? Everybody knew that they stuck together better that the Negroes did.” After being upset with things her mistress did Margaret find comfort in writing poems about Mrs. Cullinan. “That evening I decided to write a poem on being white fat, old and without children.” She watched carefully on trying to capture the essence of her loneliness and pain. Having to put up with extensive and irrelevant preparations portrays in the interracial social gap between them.
Margaret was making mischievous plans to cause her mistress to fire her.
“I had to quit the job, but the problem was going to be how to do it.” Margaret began to make mistakes when cleaning, but that was not enough. “I had begun to leave egg yolk on the dishes and wasn’t putting much heart in polishing the silver.” After endless tries Margaret breaks one Mrs. Cullinan precious Virginia dishes. “You mean to say she broke our Virginia dishes? What we gone do?” Mrs. Cullinan cried louder. “That clumsy nigger. Clumsy little black nigger.” Infuriated her mistress finally called Margaret by her real name. “Her name’s Margaret, goddamn it, her name’s
Margaret!”
Douglass in “Learning How to Read and Write” writes a narrative descriptive essay to describe how he lived as a slave for the Hugh’s family. Douglass was kind and tender hearted, despite not having a regular teacher. When Douglass first came to his mistress she did not see him as chattel. Mrs. Hugh saw Douglass to be unusual and unlike other slaves he learned how to read and write by himself. She went above her husband’s commands and requested to leave off teaching her slave’s letters, and soon vigilant of making sure Douglass was nowhere near a newspaper. “Her cessation of instructing Douglass is her first step on the road to ruination.”
Despite of her not teaching him how to read and write, Douglass was watched quite closely, but his own desire to read and write triumph kept him going. A newspaper in an attempt to read and master his skills, his mistress would be infuriated. “Nothing seemed to make her angrier than to see me with a newspaper. She seemed to think that here lay the danger. I have had her rush at me made all up of fury, and snatch from me a newspaper, in a matter that fully revealed her apprehension.”
Douglass 's devised a plan to center on making friends with white children of Baltimore and learning from them a little at a time. “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 meet in the street.” He used to complete his errands for Mr. and Mrs. Hugh quickly, and then meet up with his new friends. The fact that he was a slave moved his young friends. What became clear to Douglass was that his master was right learning did make slaves intractable and unmanageable. He was now twelve and began to chafe under the thought that he would be a slave for life. “I often found myself regretting my own existence, and wishing myself dead; and but for the hope of being free.”
He came as a perceive slaveholder, no more than "a band of successful robbers" who had gone to Africa and stolen them from their homes. He felt discontentment surge through him and often wondered if sometimes learning to read and write had been more of a curse than a blessing. His enslavement tormented him unceasingly that Douglass continually hoped that one day he might attain freedom. His desire to learn how to read and write was so enormous that he eventually accomplished this task. “I continued to do this until I could write a hand very similar to that of Master Thomas. Thus, after a long, tedious effort of years, I finally succeeded in learning how to read and write.”
To conclude both of these narrators from these selections they have similarities and differences.
One story has a woman’s point of view and the other a man, both wanting the same desire “freedom”. They both were kept as slaves from their mistress and did not have the opportunity to finish school. If even given the chance for someone to teach them they were selfish enough to discontinue Margaret and Douglass teaching lessons. The narrator from “What’s Your Name Girl?” focuses on Margaret, she did not seem to be as motivated to have liberty. She always had conflicts with Mrs. Cullinan, Margaret learned to release her anger by writing about her mistress in her journal. For the other narrator from “Learning to Read and Write” he focused more on his liberty, did everything possible to escape and be free from his mistress. “Douglass learns how to read and write and escapes to the North.” Every human deserves freedom, learning how to read and write at its finest no matter the age, gender, race or
color.

Works Cited
Angelou, Maya. "What 's Your Name Girl?" N.p., n.d. Web. “The Writer’s Presence: A Pool of Readings, Ed. Donald McQuade and Robert Atwan. 7th ed. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martins, 2012. 31-36. Print.
Douglas, Frederick. “Learning How to Read and Write” N.p., n.d. Web. The Writer’s Presence: A Pool of Readings. Ed. Donald McQuade and Robert Atwan. 7th ed. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martins, 2012. 86-92. Print.