Introduction
Frederick Douglass in ‘Learning to Read and Write’ writes about the dedication with which he learnt to read and write, and the difficulties that he faced because he was a slave for life. He recounts how his Master disliked that his wife was teaching letters and alphabets to Douglass, and forbade her from instructing him. Obeying her husband, she not only stopped teaching him but also ensured that he did not get time or resources to read at all. However, Douglass persisted in his pursuit of learning and used every opportunity to learn to read. He learnt to read with the help of street children who he had befriended, and read newspapers and books. When he was 12 years old, he read ‘The Columbian Orator,’ which apprised him of the importance of human rights and every person’s right to freedom. This was the first time in his life when he seemed to truly relish the freedom of thought and found himself at unease over his status as a slave. He soon started teaching himself how to write, learning by observing from the labels on wood panels used in constructing ships. The notebooks of his Master’s kid Thomas also helped him in learning to write. Douglass would read Thomas’s old copy-books and practice in the spaces between lines, copying what Thomas had written.
Douglass uses the three rhetorical appeals – ethos, logos, and pathos – to impress upon the audience that knowledge is the greatest liberator. Education is the prerequisite for igniting one’s thought process and one must persevere to learn to read and write. When combined with the fact that it was Douglass’ reading and writing abilities that made this memoir possible, the rhetorical appeals successfully drive home the point that literacy aids emancipation.
That Frederick Douglass is a slave was clear at the start of the text. The chapter title itself established the initial ethos of Douglass as readers realize that slaves were kept away from education. He comes forth as a dedicated and persevering learner, who despite hating his enslavement, did not escape from his master. He talks and writes like a wise man that realizes the shortcomings of his circumstances and sets out to mend them in proper and planned manner. Just the fact that he is writing from experience lends a lot of credibility to his character.
The logos of the text lies in the chronological order in which writing was preceded by the struggle to first learn letters, followed by the attempts at learning to read. His education did not happen by chance. It was a process that took years to complete. Douglass elaborates upon the different ways he used to learn: befriending school going street children who would teach him to read, learning to write by observing labors on timber, etc.
As per pathos, it is evident from the heartfelt anecdotes he relates about befriending the little boys or how his Mistress, a kind and tenderhearted woman had become his tormentor. His agony at his enslavement and not being able to remedy his situation in life arouses sympathy in readers. He relates how the dream and need for Freedom wouldn’t let him be at rest; he says Freedom was “ever present to torment me with a sense of my wretched condition.”
Moreover, the objective yet passionate tone of the text, the use of powerful imageries, poignant adjectives, similes, metaphors, and different figures of speech that the primary effect of text lies in its emotional appeals. He personifies his soul that now has a power (tongue) to express its radical thoughts. He uses simile “tiger-like fierceness” and phrase “tender heart became stone” to show the metamorphosis of his Mistress. Phrase like “valuable bread of knowledge,” the silver trump of freedom,” etc paint in the minds of the readers the exact circumstances he faced during his life as a slave. The rhetoric zenith is reached when Douglass says to the children, “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?”
Works Cited
Douglass, F. “Learning to Read and Write” in The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.
