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What Is Frederick Douglass's Ethos In Learning To Read And Write

Decent Essays

Frederick Doulgass’s essay “Learning to read and write” goes on to talk about slavery, and explains how he pursued his yearning to read and write efficiently despite his slave owners mission to keep Douglass from being literate. In his essay Douglass illustrates pathos when talking about the emotions he had during his youth when he was a slave. He presents himself in an authority to which he has the write to be literate because even being a slave, he is human. Frederick Douglass explains how slave owners kept the abolition of slavery from their minds by excluding them from education and keeping them ignorant.

Doulgass felt unworthy at times of existing because he has been enlightened by his reading and had realized his condition just as he says “ It opened my eyes in to the horrible pit, but no ladder upon which to get out.” He spoke of his emotions later in the essay with “ I often found myself of regretting my own existence, and wishing myself dead;” Douglass values the ability to read and write with a full understanding, even though his slave owners didn’t allow him to do so. He believed that he would forever remain a slave, unlike the white children.“ I wished I could be as free as they would be when they got to be men.” …show more content…

“ Nothing seemed to make her more angry than to see me with a newspaper. She seemed to think that here laid the danger.” Douglass felt as though he has the right to be literate just like non slave members of society. Douglass has ethos because of the fact that he was a slave and went on to be an accomplished writer and abolitionist

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