Frederick Douglass Learning To Read And Write Summary

In the essay Learning to read and write by Frederick Douglass he talked about growing up as a slave, trying to learn how to read and write, how it’s hard to get what you want but with a lot of work and effort it can be done. It really connected with me how if he wasn’t white ethnicity he was considered a slave and didn’t have same privliges as the white kids in his neighborhood. With having glasses and being short made me feel different as well, not with rights but with making friends and being considered different from the others. The essay really connects with world events around 1930 when slavery was legal and how it was hard to obtain the knowledge Frederick Douglass had when he was writing this essay. What he accomplished in his essay
was stating the difficulties in learning, how the master kept them ignorant, a slave would have a hard time trying to learn to read and write given everything they were allowed to do and also that with patience and effort learning to read and write can still be done but was not commonly done by slaves. Frederick Douglass had many difficulties when he was learning to read and write.
When the mistress stopped teaching him the alphabets he had to find other ways of reading. It became more difficult also because of the mistress having a change of heart and monitoring him making sure he does not get time to read. He would have to wait to run an errand and finish quick so he could pay a white neighborhood kid in bread for reading lessons. Even learning to write became a challenge and strategy once he had learned four letters from the ship carpenters writing it on the boat he would trick the other kids into thinking he can write well so he can learn new words. Eventually he learned and practiced with his master’s son’s book by re copying hat he had wrote until he could write it down without having to look. He would of never learned anything if he didn’t sneak around, he also realized that if he didn’t want to get in trouble he would of have to play dumb and hide his knowledge of reading or writing, besides the fact that slaves didn’t have rights, what horrified him the most was knowing the truth behind it all, how everyone should have rights and be treated equal the constant thought of him knowing the truth and not being able to do anything terrified him. The main idea is that the whites kept all the blacks from learning so they wouldn’t find everything out, how it’s wrong to have slaves how we are all equal, how we have our own minds and opinion. Especially
after Frederick Douglass read The Colombian Orator his perspective changed on how things are viewed and how they really should be. In conclusion Frederick Douglass writes about how it was hard for him, how certain things had to be done. He realized that in order to change and for African Americans to realize that they are worth a lot more reading and writing is one of the steps in preparing for freedom or to be able to fight for their freedom with knowledge of their history.