“Learning to Read” by Frederick Douglass
In “Learning to Read” Frederick Douglass wrote the story of his personal experience with one of the most prohibited and dangerous acts that a slave in the pre-Civil War South could do: learning to read. It is a narrative that is both shocking and revealing of insight into the times and place where it took place, the power of the institution and practice of slavery to dictate evil into the hearts of men and women, and of the dedication and strength of the personality of Frederick Douglass. A close reading demonstrates not only Douglass' narrative techniques, but his skills and intellect as a writer.
The narrative itself is told by Douglass in a chronological time sequence, from the start of the story, when his new mistress started to teach the youthful Douglass to read, through to the end of the story, with Douglass taking control of his own education, and the several strategies he employed until he was successful in learning to read. The focus of the narrative is “telling” rather than “showing.” Douglass uses clear and direct language in describing the process of his learning to read and what he had to go through to do so, but he tells the story as a narrative; he does not “show” the process in action.
The tone of the narrative is focused on the educational and biographical purpose of the chapter, to describe the challenges which Douglass met. Douglass' tone was inspirational, saying, in effect, that if he could overcome all of the obstacles in his way to learn to read and to write on a high intellectual level, then so can other people, other ex-slaves who are now free and seeking to make a place for themselves in a predominantly white social, political, and economic environment. The dominant impression for the reader is one of respect and admiration for Douglass, born a slave, who was able to teach himself to read and write material equivalent to that of any educated white person. In reading this narrative, one is astonished at the level of the insight and understanding exhibited by Douglass in his comprehension and description of his environment and his place in it. It is clear that he was an exceptionally intelligent person from his childhood on.
In following the general chronological order of his narrative, Douglass occasionally includes flashbacks of specific things that happened to him, like his working with the Irish men who urged him to escape. While the story itself was interesting in regard to the people he met, but it was also instructive by making it clear that he had an understanding at that time there were people planted to come into contact with slaves to urge them to escape in order the entrap them, and he was wary of the Irish workers for that reason. This flashback story clearly informs the reader of how insightful and intelligent the young Douglass was.
Basically, the only time markers used in the narrative are those which have reference in the stage of slavery in which Douglass found himself and in his development in learning to read. The is no indication of the specific year or years when the events happened, and only very general ideas of how much time passed between the differing parts of the story. The timetable is all internal-subjective for Douglass' story, in his life and personal-historical development. There were no direct indications of the objective time frame of the story.
Dialogue is reported in its general content, not in the form of direct quotations of the exact words spoken. Only very occasionally are direct quotations used, and there really is no dialogue in Douglass' narrative. The “hook” at the beginning of the story is the unusually kind behavior of Douglass' master's wife in being a person interested in the welfare and teaching of slaves. This catches the reader's attention by being so different from the kind of person that one expected to read about (and which the woman became with the passage of time). This contrary-to-expectation “hook” initially gets the reader interested in the story. Douglass achieves a sense of the narrative's significance by describing how accomplished he became at reading, writing, and spelling as time went on. However, for the conscientious reader, the content of the entire narrative, in its educated, literate, and skillful writing, demonstrates in and of itself the significance of the narrative.
Works Cited
Douglass, Frederick. “Learning to Read and Write.” Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. pp. 100-105.
