How Does Douglass Show Courage

In The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Douglass demonstrates courage in many ways. He shows courage when he learns to read and write, when he stands up to his master(s), and when he escapes slavery. Not a lot of people can say that they truly have courage,but Douglass is one of the few that can. Here are a few examples of how he shows courage. The first way he shows courage is when he wants to learn to read and write. In chapter nine, his master’s wife, Mrs. Auld, starts teaching him the ABC’s and teaching him how to spell three or four letter words. After only a few lessons, Mr. Auld finds out and is furious. After Mrs. Auld is forced to stop teaching him, he shows courage in that he continues to learn to read and write. He does this by befriending the white boys in the neighborhood and tricking them into teaching him. He tricked them by saying that he could spell more words than theythem & making a competition out of it. This takes courage because slaves aren’t supposed to know how to read and write, so he could get in a lot of trouble for it. In chapter 7 of his book, he says,”The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers… (Douglass
In Chapter 10, he says,”I began to want to live upon free land...I was no longer content, therefore, to live with him or any other slaveholder” (Douglass 122).”. This shows how much he wanted to be free. He was very brave to escape because he could have easily been caught, and then he would have suffered terrible consequences. He also could have been killed. These are just a few examples of how Frederick Douglass demonstrates courage. Learning to read and write, standing up to his masters, and escaping slavery were extremely dangerous for slaves. He could have easily been killed for doing everything he did. Most other slaves would have never even thought of doing those things for fear of defying their masters and possibly getting