Learning to read and write

Markeia Scruggs
October 6, 2009
2 pg lit response
In “Learning to Read and Write”, Frederick Douglas uses various methods to become literate. Douglas used his wit to think of various to learn to read and write. Frederick Douglas uses rhetoric while supporting his claim.
In many parts of the text, Douglas appeals to pathos. I believe he appeals to pathos in order to make the reader feel sympathy and feel the way he felt. Also, Douglas sounds as though he is speaking to a specific audience while appealing to pathos. It seems as though he is speaking to African-Americans because he knows that we can connect to what he is saying. The text states, “The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes; and in a strange land reduced us to slavery. I loathed them as being the meanest as well as the most wicked of men.” Douglas certainly doesn’t sound as though he’s speaking to a white audience.
Frederick Douglas also appeals to pathos by stating, “I used to talk this matter of slavery over with them. I would sometimes say to them, I wished I could be as free as they would be when they got to be men. You will be free as soon as you are twenty-one, but I am a slave for life! Have not I as good a right to be free as you have?” These strong words give the passage a new meaning. They strongly appeal to pathos, because Douglas wants the reader to know his struggle. He wants the reader to feel his pain and hardship. He’s telling us that he deserves to be free too and he yearns for unattainable freedom.
In the passage, Douglas explains how he used his wit to learn to read and write. This is extremely ironic, seeing that slaves were deemed as unintelligent. For example, “Mistress, in teaching me the alphabet, had given me the inch, and no precaution could prevent me from taking the ell. The plan which I adopted, and the one by which I was most successful, was that of making friends of all the little white boys whom I met in the street. As many of these as I could, I converted into teachers.” the text states. For Douglas to be a “slave” he was extremely intelligent. He used his intelligence to become smarter.
Through this passage, Frederick Douglas explains how he became literate. He used his intelligence to become even more intelligence. He used many different ways in which to learn to read and write. He used rhetoric to prove his claim. His appeal to pathos makes the passage all the more meaningful.