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 of 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 an education would “spoil” him and “forever unfit him to be a slave” (2054). He believed that the ability to read makes a slave “unmanageable” and “discontented” . Douglass discovered that the “white man’s power to enslave the black man” was in his literacy and education. As long as the…show more content…
Reading opened his eyes to his “wretched condition” and he longed for independence and freedom. He did not desire this for himself alone, but also for his fellow slaves. He “imbue[d] their minds with thoughts of freedom” and sought to “impress them with the gross fraud and inhumanity of slavery”
