Comparing Fredrick Douglas's The Joy Of Reading And Writing

“The illiterate of the future will not be the person who cannot read. It will be the person who does not know how to learn,” (ThinkExist). This quote was written in 1928 by an American author of science fiction, Alvin Toffler, and that quote holds true until this day. In “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me,” by Sherman Alexie, he writes about the difficulties that he experienced as a child overcoming the intellectual limit that was put upon his culture, in this case American Indians. Another writer who experienced some of the harshest moments of American history and is always mentioned when discussing overcoming illiteracy is Fredrick Douglas who wrote “Learning to Read and Write.” Both of these authors have experienced limitations in their culture and yet strived to overcome them to better themselves and break away from the norms of society. Knowing to read
Fredrick Douglas was destined to die a slave but once he learned the basics of reading, there was no stopping him, “The first step had been taken…in teaching me the alphabet, had given me the inch, and no precaution could prevent me from taking the ell” (Douglas 95). Just like Sherman, Fredrick learned to pursue this new world of education that was always closed off to him. All the African Americans in the south were slaves and were highly denied any time of intelligence or education. Yet he found a way and transformed children into teachers and knew that education and books were the key to his freedom and becoming someone better and even though he was still supposed to act like an unintelligent slave, without anyone knowing, he was coming out of the cocoon. He took the risk of failure, of whipping, of death for a chance to become what he always dreamed, himself. He continually fought against all odds to reach his potential, “Thus, after a long, tedious effort for years, I finally succeeded in learning to write,” (Douglas