Response to Fredrick Douglass Narritive

Elyse K. Hall
English 1113, 331
C. Cruthirds

The phrase “Knowledge is power”, means that a person’s future awareness will increase with everything that they learn. As in Fredrick Douglas’s life, and within my own, our awareness has increased by learning about other people, even if not by our own choice. Though my own experiences have not been as drastic as Fredrick’s, they have been pretty wild.
When growing up with a big and spread out family, home life tends to be a little erratic. Since my mother was not the best of children, she had a few boyfriends in her time. She had my sister when she was six-teen, and my brother and I when she was around twenty. My biological father supported her until they both decided that they needed to go their separate ways, and she then married my step father. My family at the time consisted of my parents, my six-teen year old sister, my twin brother, and myself at age eleven. I had always thought of my family as pretty close to perfect until people started to talk. I first learned of this by my neighbor-friend’s mother, who whispered to her kid about why I had to leave every other weekend to visit my “other” father. I had never before thought of this as a strange idea, so I asked my sister about it. She told me our mother’s story. Once my mother learned of this, she was not upset with me for asking so many questions, and for that I’m glad. I learned more about my mother that day and I respected her for recognizing her past mistakes. Since she had, what I think to be, a pretty messed up life before; she corrected that and raised her children to be respectable people.
Learning about other people can be damaging, if taken the wrong way. In Fredrick Douglas’s case, he learned more about himself by taking the steps to read. He became more aware of what was being done to slaves and himself. Because of his self education, he was eventually freed by knowledge and was able to help other slaves with the power that he had.