Themes In "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass"

The book Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, by Frederick Douglass, is a story about Frederick Douglass’s life as a slave and how he goes on his quest to achieve freedom. Douglass was born into slavery and goes from master to master, and he finally sees the power of education when he reaches Baltimore to work for some new people. Here Douglass begins to learn how to read and write and he uses this to his advantage in hopes of becoming free one day. He manages to teach himself how to read in secret and then helps the other slaves become more literate. Eventually Douglass does manage to escape but he doesn’t stop there, he becomes an activist himself in hopes of ending all slavery one day. Through this book, Douglass reveals that learning is essential in order to achieve freedom, friends can help you to achieve your goals, and that slavery can have a very negative effect on a slave’s mind. Douglass makes it clear that in order for the slaves to gain their freedom they must become more educated like their masters. Masters were afraid of having slaves who were literate because it could be very dangerous and the slaves might get the idea that they were equal with their masters. Mrs. Auld accidently made the mistake and began teaching Douglass how to read and write, but then her husband soon found out and scolded her for doing such rash things and forbade her from doing so ever again. Douglass was saddened at this when he says, “Whilst I was saddened by the thought of losing the aid of my kind mistress… Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with a higher hope… to learn how to read” (143). The fact that Mr. Atul didn’t want Douglass to learn how to read just makes Douglass realize the kind of power education has. And after Mr. Atul stops his wife from teaching him any further, Douglass just tries that much harder to learn how to become literate on his own. Douglass also shows how essential education is in another