Frederick Douglass Childhood Analysis

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The childhood of Frederick Douglass is different from Zora Neale Hurston’s childhood, yet they each learned lessons as to what it meant to be Black or coming from a black and slavery background. These lessons included relationships and status in life. Some lessons on what it meant to be Black were harder both mentally and emotionally for Frederick Douglass. Unlike Zora, for Douglass it meant being a slave for life, subjected to cruel harsh treatment, living in ignorance, and not knowing his family like white children did. Zora, on the other hand, did not have any of these issues to deal with and seemed to have had a more positive view of life as a black person. However, these two came to a point in their lives that the color of their skin had meaning to society. It is significant that in the dialogue with which Douglass becomes so familiar, the master’s arguments regarding slavery are “all . . . disposed of by the slave” (56). Douglass continues to…show more content…
It is true that learning to read brings Douglass “that very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted would follow” (56). However, it is not that Douglass was blissfully persevering in his enslaved state prior to the book planting new ideas in his head that brought discontentment. Rather, his reading “gave tongue to interesting thoughts of my own soul, which had frequently flashed through my mind, and died away for want of utterance” (56). This is a very provocative view of reading. Did Douglass really read this stuff when he was twelve or so? Did it really simply give voice to things he already wanted to say? I don’t know if it really matters if it happened that way. White readers sympathetic to the antislavery cause were most likely educated Northerners, and this idea of a selfeducated man would sit well with them.
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