Compare Frederick Douglass And Mark Twain

1205 Words3 Pages

Frederic Douglass and Mark Twain on Education Education is a privilege. The knowledge gained through education enables an individual’s potential to be optimally utilized owing to training of the human mind, and enlarge their view over the world. Both “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” by Frederick Douglass himself and “Old Times on the Mississippi” by Mark Twain explore the idea of education. The two autobiographies are extremely different; one was written by a former slave, while the other was written by a white man. Hence, it is to be expected that both men had had different motivations to get an education, and different processes of acquiring education. Their results of education, however, were fairly similar. Frederick Douglass …show more content…

Their education had given them a new perspective of everything around them—a glimpse to a whole new world. Upon learning to read, Douglass began to realize how an education could ruin slaves. With education, comes enlightenment, and for him his enlightenment was the realization to the injustices going on around him. With him finally being able to read, he understood more fully the implications of slavery sometimes served to make him more miserable as he came to comprehend the hopelessness of the situation for himself and the other slaves. He states in his narrative, “In moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me” (268) because he realized that his knowledge came at a cost—he knew that there was nothing normal and right about slavery, yet he had to live as one—whatever knowledge he had attained, festered in his mind and made him even unhappier with the conditions and treatment than …show more content…

Douglass’ was to free himself from slaver, while Twain’s was to come back to his village with glory. Everyone also had different ways to get an education—Douglass’ was to learn from the white children in his neighborhood secretly, while Twain’s was handed to him by Mr. B. But the different ways of learning do not really matter, as their education resulted in them realizing that knowledge would not always bring beauty to life, if anything, knowledge would usually strip the beauty off life. I guess, knowledge is not all it’s cracked up to

Open Document