Once More Into the Fray

While reading today I was a little confused because I had the sense that I had already read what I was reading, so I was a little scared at first. Then I realized that this was actually one of the first things I read at the beginning of this AP-Lang class. Knowing this I remembered almost the entirety of the chapter I was reading what I didn't have was the context of the previous chapters. Having this I got to analyze much better what I was reading and interpreted in a different way as the first time I read. My first blog post was about how patience in hard times is key in many situations I kept this thought every second of my 25 minute reading. The text was about how Frederick after being drawn into reading by a slip of his mistress became very eager to learn more and to read more. He already had that truth which his mistresses husband tried to keep very cautiously, this was killing him inside he felt trapped: "It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but no ladder upon which to get out"(p.51). 

It is amazing how a little  knowledge can change your life radically, the depravation of any type of knowledge in the slaves made them ignorant it made them much easier to control like a herd of animals. They lived in a bubble in which they didn't see their lives go beyond that of slavery, in my opinion I think they thought that this had always been their destiny and that there is no way of escaping it : "I was 12 years old, and the thought of being a slave for life began to bear heavily upon my heart"(p.50). So for Douglass to step out of this bubble was huge for him he couldn't grasp at first what he had on his hands he was on his own renaissance or enlightenment if you would apply upon his situation as he was stepping out of the darkness. The Columbian Orator  his first book to read gave him a new set of ideas who made him keep digging his hole with no ladder out, he had now acquired the big picture ideas. He got beyond a slave consciousness and stepped into his masters, this made his hatred grow bigger. He could now see that he was being used all along, a bunch of opportunistic thieves: "The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery"(p.51). All this knowledge he was soaking up like a sponge was giving and enriching his point of view, and even giving him the criteria to know that he wanted to become. An abolitionist as he knew that this word was related to the idea of the end of slavery. Also the term of human rights he was able to get from reading which he knew that his people were being kept off. All that patience I said from the beginning that Douglass had been keeping was for this moment, the moment that he knew he had to escape now knowing that he had to fight slavery.

What I most valued from today's reading was the perseverance to achieve what you want with no fear, no regrets. Douglass Is a clear example as he is a self made man who educated himself in a moment were it was almost virtually impossible. With no support, with no resources you might say he rose from the ashes to fight a fight worth fighting to make of his people something more even if he never lived to see it.