A number of strategies that might not be along the lines of what one might consider traditional or formal training.

In a re-reading of this essay, we learn that “strategems” is a more polite way of the sly tactics Douglass uses to educate himself.

In this passage Frederick Douglas say that in order to accomplish his goal to read and write he had to employ strategies or “strategems” as he calls them in the book in order to learn.

He had TEACHERS.

This is designed for Douglass to have “absolved” the Mistress for her not wanting to educate him. She was responding to the social norms of her time. . .is that a viable reason to not do the right thing, I wonder.

The idea that someone has the power to “lock” someone away, into “mental darkness” might be a bridge across the other text being considered (Malcolm X).

Douglass makes a suggestion that the power over the mistress is in violation of her innate sense of power to affect change in a person by way of instruction and education.

Douglass makes comment here on the spirit of the Mistress with a “simplicity of her soul” who seems to have a “commission” within her to treat others as they should be treated.

It says something about both humans and the society of the time that Mrs. Hugh’s first instinct was to be kind to Mr. Douglas, and it was only after strict instruction and “training” that she began to treat him as “a brute.”

Having someone that cared for him helped him to have the belief in himself to learn to read and write.Also that he was given the chance to be able to learn this sacred skill that he ended up looking at as curse because it shed more of the evil of his situation.

This sentence shows that her mistress was a warm-hearted person. She treated her as you should treat everyone, the golden rule as you might say. He felt like him being treated as a human was wrong which hearing that is so sad to think about because no one should ever feel that way.

As I first read this I read a lot about Douglas’s mistress. It really shows how much of a kind heart she had until slavery changed things for her and now she is very different and how her tender heart became stone.

Property. The Mistress’s inner appreciation of the human is in direct violation of the economy of her time. Frederick is not a human; he is property (in the context of the essay here).

Treating a slave as a human is considered dangerous? Why is it dangerous?

Being considered an outcast from society because “maybe slaves shouldn’t be treated like livestock?” What made her so scared to treat Fredrick so differently? Would more harm than being an outcast come to her? Would she be arrested or beaten?

Would her husband be furious, is that who she is so scared of? Who she is always trying to do better for? Why did she change so suddenly, and how come she is so cruel to someone she once treated so kindly?

Metaphorical here, but this poli-socio-economic paradigm of slavery proves to be harmful to those who would naturally oppose the idea.

Shared “injury?” This might be questioned today, but how do this sharing suggest a similar state between the two figures?

An adjectival that would come straight out of the Religious/Spiritual category.

This women would do anything for them. The way they make it seem is that she puts everyone in front of herself. Her caring for everyone made them believe in themselves.

The counterpart to “invest.” An ECONOMIC term.

This opened my eyes to show that slavery didn’t only have negative effects on the slaves, but also the slave owners. It turned a caring, gentle woman into a violent person with no regards to how anyone felt.

This sentence truly shows what it was like for the slaves. They would have people who were kind to them, then boom, they act like they never meet them before.

This line gives a very good example of a metaphor. I believe the author was trying to get across how salves felt and how she was feeling.

Again, this metaphorical usage suggests economic leanings. This “accounting.”

“a former measure of length (equivalent to six hand breadths) used mainly for textiles, locally variable but typically about 45 inches.”

Fredrick Douglas was already intelligent enough to know how to use the resources that he had available to him. He learned from people who didn’t even know they were teaching him. He took every bit of information that he could get because he was so eager to learn.

Has some leanings in ECONOMICS here.

This text seems to show how the roles have been reversed. Frederick Douglas seems to have the upper hand when he normally has no power at all. He gives bread to poor white children and converts them “into teachers”. He controls these children by giving them bread in exchange for something he wants. This could be categorized as manipulative, but clearly there was no ill will since he did not name them.

Fredrick wanted to spread knowledge he believed knowledge is power so he used bread as a reward to get the kids to be a type of peer teachers to spread the word it was a very risky yet smart move from him.

Watch the denotations and connotations here. More than metaphor. What we have a physical TRADE for a philosophical. TRADE is a solid term coming out of the ECONOMICAL category.

In Mr. Hankin’s sample work he mentioned that in the essay by Malcolm X, it said a “stock of knowledge,” correlating with the theme category of ECONOMY. In this sentence it said “… bread of knowledge,” resembling the same thing just said in the other essay.
Fredrick called it the bread of knowledge because he would trade bread he got from the house for knowledge from the homeless boys on the street. This sentence matches in the theme categories of CLASS/CLASS SYSTEMS and SOCIETY/COMMUNITY.

Toward kindness is a sort of a nod toward RELIGIOUS/SPIRITUAL here when grouped together with other terms within the essay.

Frederick Douglass received lessons from these boys at the ship yard on how to read. They taught him the base of what he knows. In his eyes, this knowledge is worth more than gold. But Douglass never once named them in hopes of saving them from the embarrassment. I think this shows how truly compassionate Douglass felt for these boys who gave him the wealth of knowledge he now has. Despite all of the bitterness he felt towards white people for knowingly enslaving his people, he still chose to keep their names unspoken.

Douglass longed for freedom and wished he could be a “normal” child. He knew his new friends would be free once they are old enough, but he would always be stuck as a slave. His friends felt for him, and hope for change, probably not understanding the path to freedom isn’t that simple. Maybe a potential social class?

This line shows how children are better than adults, because they do not have as much experience in their society. The children are kind to Frederick because their parents have not corrupted them to the idea of slavery. Using their kindness and inexperience in society, Frederick befriends the children and receives their help with learning.

When people think of the times of slavery, many don’t think about the children who weren’t tainted by their parent’s ideals. The ones who would gladly play with whoever they could, regardless of skin color.

They were the kids who felt bad for the conditions in which many slaves lived. The ones who would hope for these playmates would be free one day. They thought every child as equal.

And when they grow up, how is it that their ideals shift so suddenly sometimes?

This sentence makes me believe that Fredrick was twelve years old when he had the first realization that this might be his entire life, he might always be working as someones slave.

Without literacy, Douglass might continue to have these flashes of inspiration but not have the tools to put them down into a physical form. As quickly as they might light, they would be extinguished.

Isn’t a moral, like an aphorism, a kind of a theme?

This sentence shows that Frederick Douglas grew up in a time when the thought of equal human rights and treating people of color equal was looked down upon by the general population. Only being talked about by certain white people.

As the author grew in emotional and literary maturity, he began to realize truly how oppressed he is in life. Learning to read was a catalyst in his growth and his realization of oppression. The “truth over the conscience of a slaveholder” was also emphasized upon in this paragraph. This can be taken as the author’s interpretation of the truth about slavery being barred by those not fortunate enough to literally understand injustice- it was just their way of life.

The author did very well with pulling in the readers with how he wrote and his wording. The boy seemed to climb one obstacle to be pushed down again. he is really seeing how unfair life is.

Here Douglass describes the painful aspect of learning more about (anything might fit here when looked at historical progression, losses along the way, etc.).

This paragraph highlights Frederick Douglas’s learning to read. The question here is would he have been better of not being able to read? Ignorance is bliss and by reading these texts on slavery he tormented himself. He learned about the slave trade and the greed that drove it. Once he read the books he couldn’t stop which led him to some grim realizations. If other slaves were forced to live that way for their whole lives, who was to say Douglas would get out? Knowledge in this case is a double edged sword.

Douglas talks about debating whether or not his gift of knowledge is a good or bad thing. While on one end, Without his ability, it is unlikely that he ever would have made it out of his situation. And then again, with his newfound knowledge he still found out the history of how and why he was here; and all of the reason why his masters have been trying to keep him from learning to read and write.

Learning to read opened up the author’s eyes to the wretched truths of slavery, but provided a sense of understanding that there could be a better life one day.

Douglas as a young child has been privileged with the ability to read and expand his education, but at what cost? He is now a child with the burden of understanding and knowing that his conditions are inhumane. Along with that burden he has yet to find a way to change it, he now has the never ending thoughts of his conditions within his head.

Frederick talks about how he wished he didn’t know so much sometimes so he didn’t know how bad his life really was. It would have been much easier at times to simply not know the full effect of what was going on and be clueless about the severity of their situation.

Would being a ’beast" truly be better than not knowing anything at all? And did Fredrick Douglas, who had learned to read, truly believe that only he was the man among beasts? The one who could have reasonable thought, and no other slave could think as though he does?

Perhaps they couldn’t describe their thoughts quite as well, but they still had the ability to think just as he does.

Once Frederick Douglas learned about and understood freedom from slavery he constantly thought about it. As it can be seen in these lines and the ones before it, when he was aware of the notion of freedom it was something that he truly desired and believed he deserved and was encouraged by the readings that he had done, and without him learning how to read he may have never had such intellectual insights.

Fredrick is fully understanding his prize of being able to read but it is coming at him with a price.He can read but he can now also make out how poorly slaves are being treated. he is disgusted with the people who are allowing this to happen. This sentence uses good analogies to explain how he is feeling about everything.

While slavery was very difficult as those who were in slavery were treated unfairly, it could easily appear that death would be a better option as opposed to having to spend one’s entire life in slavery. That is essentially what Douglas is saying in these lines but he had the hope of one day becoming free to keep him from wanting to kill or get himself killed.

The only way Douglass managed not to end his own life was hope. Hope that one day he’d be free. Hope that he would not resort to killing for his own life. The chains of slavery has caused significant damage on Douglass’s mental state.

Frederick believed his life was so terrible and miserable that the only reason he had for not dying right then and there was the hope that his life might change one day. All he had ever known was the pain and suffering of slavery and it is very apparent that these pains were taking their toll.

The fact that he was looking back on being a slave and wished he had killed himself is terrible. It makes you think how many other slaves probably felt the exact same way as he did and how many did kill themselves because slavery was so awful. He had hope that maybe one day he would be free and hope is something was slaves probably had but got stolen away from them because people thought it was okay to basically take people for hostage.

You can tell in this line how he longed to hear others tell their stories of slavery. I wonder if he was so eager to hear these stories to compare them to his own experiences in slavery? Then he goes on to say “I was a ready listener”, so maybe he wanted to hear them so he did not feel alone in his hardships.

This interaction with the Irishman shows how different society was between America and Europe at the time. In Europe, slavery had been banned for a while, while in America, slavery was at its height. The reaction of the Irishman shows how slavery disgusts him, and how he thinks it should be abolished, like in his homeland.

Lines like this put the time period into perspective for me. Frederick had to be worried about what he said to people and how it would be interpreted. If these men were looking for a reward his words would be taken out of context and punishment would ensue. He could not even engage in the idea of freedom because of the consequences. If you are the only person who can read and understand the value of freedom it must be lonely.

This just goes to show you how desperate he was to write, that he would watch ship carpenters write on the timber for where it was going to go on the ship. He was very determined to learn how to read and write, no matter how challenging it was going to be. He had a mind set that shows he was going to turn his struggles from slavery into something he could make use out of.

Douglas plays on the ego and temperament of his peers to get what he wants. I wonder why he chose this way and not the bread for knowledge transaction mentioned above.

This sentence shows the mind set of white people of the time. The whites thought of people of color were not very smart. No one was there to teach them otherwise espcially not the people of color who could not read or right.

Even though this could be see as most manipulative, we see the sort of sly resourcefulness employed by Douglass in the interest of securing an education for himself.

Fredrick seems to be aware that having an education is important. He learns to read and write using anything he can get his hands on. For example he talks the little master, that can write, “I would tell him I could write as well as he could” knowing that he could not, but now the boy is going to write and provide Fredrick with a writing lesson.

Fredrick was determined to learn how to write. It would only better him and help him with his escape. He would challenging others that he could write better, thus helping him by getting a lesson while challenging others. He was very smart in how he played everyone, but it bettered him.

This improvisation here looks a little bit “homemade” to me.

Remember. . .RESOURCES is a term that might have come right out of the ECONOMIC category. RESOURCEFULNESS is one that would come out of the PSYCHOLOGICAL category.

Frederick knew that making writing a competition to these kids would drive them to want to do it more. They didn’t realize they were helping him learn because they were so focused on trying to have the best handwriting. It was smart of Douglas to motivate these kids the right way.