Frederick Douglass Literary Analysis

Long ago, learning was thought of as a luxury or something only royals or wealthy people would get to enjoy. People worked hard to give their kids a good education. Nowadays, learning has become something we take for granted. Frederick Douglass was born as a slave like thousands of other African Americans at the time. These slaves would work hard and make sure that they should not upset their masters but the only compensation they would receive for all their hard work was hatred and cruelty. At the time, it was said that learning would spoil a Negro and put thoughts in his/her head that would cause violence and loyalty towards their masters. Mr. Auld, one of Douglass’s masters stated that the best Negro in the world would become spoiled because …show more content…
When Douglass was a child growing up on Colonel Lloyd’s plantation he was naïve and did not know about the life of suffering that he would have to go through when he became older. Every day, he heard slaves coming to the Great House Farm spontaneously singing songs that sounded both joyful and sad at the same time. Douglass states that Northerners commonly mistake the songs that the slaves sing as being happy. The deep meaning of the songs was not apparent to Douglass until he became an outsider to the group. At this stage, he started to come apart from the rest of his peers and saw things differently. Later on, when Mrs. Auld becomes his mistress, she turns out to be a very nice woman who cares for others and is willing to help whenever possible. When Douglass arrives at the Auld house, he is greeted with great hospitality by Mrs. Auld and he feels comforted in her presence. The next day, Mrs. Auld proceeds to teach Douglass the basics of reading and the alphabet when Mr. Auld stops her and says that if she gave a Negro an inch, than he will take an ell. When Douglass goes to a different master, he thanks Mrs. Auld for sparking the thought of escaping freedom. Douglass’s opinion of learning does change throughout the narrative in my opinion. He went from feeling like he was stuck in a pit with no way out to constantly contemplating some kind of escape from the grasp of

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