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Analysis of frederick douglas's "learning to read and write
Analysis of frederick douglas's "learning to read and write
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Knowledge can hurt more than it can help. Montag states “ He pressed at the pain in his eyes and suddenly the odor of kerosene made him vomit.” Now that Montag is faced with this he resents who he was in the the beginning being a fireman who set books on fire and loved the smell of kerosine and thought of it as a perfume. Likewise in Douglas’s “Learning to Read and Write” Douglas states “The silver trump of freedom (knowledge) had roused my soul to eternal weakness.”Douglas's knowledge of freedom has caused him to question why he wants to learn to read and write, because it's not going to make him any more free . It’s just going to put his life at more of a higher risk of dying, because once his owner finds out he can read and write he’s probably going to kill him before he finds a way to become free.
Neither Montag or douglas liked the outcome or their lives after they learned the knowledge they so long seeked in the beginning. Montag and his fire
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When the firemen arrived, the old lady who lived there was still there, and this alone is unusual because normally the police come first and take the people out so the fireman can burn the house in peace. As montag is searching for books to burn in the house, he finds one and quickly sticks it under his arm in hiding. When the fireman start to set the house on fire, the old lady sat down and refused to leave. The fireman start counting down the time before they set the house on fire. The woman sits on the middle of the front porch for all to see and says to stop counting and she reveals a small kitchen match to them, only to drop it to the floor and light her own house on fire, right there in front of
Douglass views his education as his most important feature, but he also enables his brain to the realizing of the torture upon his fellow slaves. Douglass was not allowed to learn, because he was a slave, and they didn’t want slaves to become smarter than the whites. In the passage it states, “learning would ...
One of the main reasons that Montag changed so drastically over the course of the book was his curiosity. Montag spent a lot of time thinking about his job and started questioning everything he was doing. He starts wondering why books need to be burned and why things are the way that they are. Montag takes up a special interest in book and why things are this way. “Was-was it always like this? The firehouse, our work?” Montag asks Beatty showing his curiosity. Montag’s curiosity is what drives him to find out everything he can about books, society and the way that things used to be. It is only natural for him to begin to question everything especially because his job involves burning hundreds of books a day yet he was never told why these books need to burned. Imagine destroying an object everyday, and being told how important your job is. Naturally you would want to know why you are destroying these objects. This is what happened to Montag and Beatty tried to explain it to him and tells him he shouldn’t be too curious about it “A natural error, curiosity alone,” Beatty also asks Montag “Listen to me, Montag. Once to each fireman, at least once in his career, he just itches to know what these books are all about. He just aches to know. Isn't that so?” Curiosity is a very natural emotion and even Beatty, who tries to explain things to Montag and discourages books, even admits to looking a few books but says “I've had to read a few in my time, to know what I was about, and the books say nothing!” I believe that this would make Montag even more curious.
Everyone remembers when they learned to read and write some more than others. Even well known people like Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X. They wrote narratives, “Learning to Read And Write” by Frederick Douglass and “Learning to Read” by Malcolm X, to show us when, where, and how they learned to read and write. Both authors go through struggles that we would never think could or would happen. Even though they go through struggles they still became eager to learn more to better themselves. It gave them power they never thought they could achieve. They have many similar and different trials that they went through so they could learn how to read and write.
One day, Douglass eavesdrops on him and Mrs. Auld’s conversation. Mr. Auld persuades her that reading “could do him (Douglass) no good, but a great deal of harm.” (page 39) This antithesis along with the rest of his statement makes Douglass come to the realization that literacy is equated with not only individual consciousness but also freedom. From that day on, Douglass makes it his goal to learn as much as he can, eventually learning how to write,
The first of all, Montag loses his control over his own mind. At the beginning of the story, he meets a beautiful girl called Clarisse. She is a peculiar girl who wonders about the society and how people live in there. She tells Montag the beauty of the nature, and also questions him about his job and life. Though he has been proud of being a fireman, Clarisse says, “I think it’s so strange you’re a fireman, it just doesn’t seem right for you, somehow” (21). Montag feels “his body divide itself into a hotness and a coldness, a softness and a hardness, a trembling and a not trembling, the two halves grinding one upon the other” (21) by her words. Everything Clarisse says is something new to him and he gradually gets influenced a lot by this mysterious girl. Actually, the impact of the girl is too significant that his mind is taken over by her when he talks with Beatty, the captain of the firemen. “Suddenly it seemed a much younger voice was speaking for him. He opened his mouth and it was Clarisse McClellan saying, ‘Didn’t firemen prevent fires rather than stoke them up and get them going?’” (31). His mind is not controlled by himself in this part. He takes of Clarisse’s mind and it causes confusion within his mind. It can be said that this happening is an introduction of him losing his entire identity.
... and unhappy (Douglass 78).” Learning how to read was as big a step towards freedom for Douglass as it was back. It made him aware of the circumstances but it also made him realize how difficult it would be for him to ever find himself a free man. However, knowledge overpowers ignorance in the sense that his masters could never take his ability to read away from him and because Douglass now knew his condition, he knew that he deserved a better life.
As Montag was reading the books he say’s “There must be something in books, something in books, things we can't imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house;....”(48). In the beginning Bradbury writes about how Montag just thought the the reason the people acted like that, because they were crazy but now he’s seeing there must be something powerful and meaningful in books. This incident also had Montag rethink his lifestyle, because he told his wife “... maybe I wait my job awhile?”(48). That was unexpected because at first he didn't see anything but his job. Bradbury added that the lady in the house made Montag confounded. Montag commented “well, this fire’ll last me the rest of my life, God! I’ve been trying to put it out, in my mind all night. I’m crazy with trying.”(48). This was unexpected because he’s seen fires all the time but somehow this one has traumatized him. Also when the woman in the burning house protected about them having her books, he was thinking like what’s making her stay in this house with some unmeaningful books. “You can’t have my books,” she said.”(35). After that night Montag was fed up, with everything because of that one woman persistence to stay in that house with
Montag's identity crisis of being a fireman makes him question who he is. Montag notices that the firemen have the same appearance as himself which has him think about Clarisse's question . "He opened his mouth and it was Clarisse McCellen saying, 'Didn't firemen prevent fires rather than stroke them up and get them going' (34)?" This isn't his thoughts, instead they are Clarisse's thoughts since she asked it first. This shows an internal conflict because Motang is questioning his identity as a fireman which makes him want to choose a side. He is siding on Clarisse's side thinking she might be right, since he ask the same question as her. He is curious to know even though he is already familiar with the fireman history but thinks he will get a different response. Perhaps Montag is thinking tha...
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
Literacy plays an important part in helping Douglass achieve his freedom. Learning to read and write enlightened his mind to the injustice of slavery; it kindled in his heart longings for liberty. Douglass’s skills proved instrumental in his attempts to escape and afterwards in his mission as a spokesman against slavery. Douglass was motivated to learn how to read by hearing his master condemn the education of slaves. Mr. Auld declared that education would “spoil” him and “forever unfit him to be a slave” (2054).
Our knowledge is a key to our success and happiness in our life to give us personal satisfaction. Knowledge is power but not always. Sometimes our self-awareness and growth as an individual gives us negative thoughts that make us want to go back to undo it. Everyone wants to unlearn a part in our life that brought us pain and problems. Good or bad experiences brought by true wisdom can be used for our self-acceptance, self-fulfillment and these experiences would make us stronger as we walk to the road of our so called “life”, but Douglas’s and my experience about knowledge confirmed his belief that “Knowledge is a curse”. Both of us felt frustrated and sad from learning knowledge.
“Behind his mask of conformity, Montag gradually undergoes a change of values. Montag realized his life had been meaningless without books” (Liukkonen). In the beginning of the novel, Montag said, “It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed” (Bradbury 3). For most of his life, Montag conformed just like the other members of society. He set things on fire because it was his job and did not question whether or not it was the right thing to do. Throughout the story, however, he grew to find and voice his own opinions and resisted the conformity that his society stressed. When Montag had to decide whether or not to burn Beatty to death, he proved himself by not giving in to what was expected. He killed the captain of the police department, which was an entirely defiant act (Bradbury
While knowledge can open many doors for success, it can also put a lock on various ones for people who don’t have an opportunity to practice it. This is portrayed in an essay by Frederick Douglass named Learning to Read and Write. It portrays the hardships he faced and the toll it took on him. Frederick Douglass was a slave who was born in Talbot County Maryland and then became a server for a family in Baltimore. He also became an active participant in the abolitionist movement in 1838. Michael Scot’s response toward Frederick Douglass was that gaining knowledge was more of a dissatisfaction rather than a worthy accomplishment for the reason that education made him realize he had no other option to his condition. For Frederick Douglass, learning
1)Montag: The Montag we meet at the beginning of the story is a completely different Montag in the end. At the beginning he is dedicated to his job as a fireman, but that soon changes once he meets Clarisse. His faith in society and his job all starts to go downhill. Montag actually enjoys his destructive work and it even amuses him by watching the suffering he inflicts upon others but he is hungry for knowledge. Instead of burning all of the books from the “criminals” houses, he actually ends up stealing some and hiding them in his own house.
In the essay “Learning to Read and Write,” Frederick Douglass illustrates how he successfully overcome the tremendous difficulties to become literate. He also explains the injustice between slavers and slaveholders. Douglass believes that education is the key to freedom for slavers. Similarly, many of us regard education as the path to achieve a career from a job.