Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Douglass's "Learning to Read and Write"

In "Learning to Read and Write", Frederick Douglass uses different strategies to get his point across to you. Its amazing how much he had to go through in order to learn and write while we have it simple and don't want to. Look at all the things that he had to do, while we have more than enough things, in order to learn to read and write. Exposition and astonishment are found in "Learning to Read and Write."
Douglass has some expositional areas in his essay that if you pay attention to all the things that he has gone through, you would be able to put it together. Throughout the essay, Douglass explains how he got to write and read. He started out with his owner showing him the alphabet and why it wasn't common for slaves to know how to read and write. After a long time of just looking at the alphabet and text, he began to read and understand a bit of what it was. Letters at a nearby ship yard helped him learn to read by seeing what they meant. Writing, which he didn't have a place for, came to him by using chalk, walls and the ground. He explained all of the things that he went through to finally get reading and writing to eventually drop in place for him after a long time of hard work.
Astonishment was put in this essay by Douglass to show the types of things that all should do. First of all, the kindness of the people that were around him more than just good. He had people that gave Douglass advice on how to get free. Douglass had others that were kind by giving him tools in which he would need for the future, and he did use them. If you look around, there are not to many people that would actually take the tools that you give them and use them or even give you the tools in order for you to use, of these there are more of though. You should be one that does use the tools that are given to you instead of just putting them to waist. You should also give tool to get others going, not to put them down. What also was astonishing, was that he went through all the things above in order to learn to read and write, when we have it so easily.
Douglass uses a few strategies in, "Learning to Read and Write", this short essay to tell about all the challenges that he had to go through in order to achieve something that we think is simple. The strategies have some meaning behind them. The astonishing thing is what he did, that is something that many more people should do in their lives. Give and use tools other than wasting them is one thing that you should remember to do.

5 comments:

Gabe said...

Hey Eddie I liked what you had to say in the essay and I do agree with what you have to say. I enjoyed reading what you wrote and liked your style and it was a very solid paper. But in this essay I noticed that there was not to much rhetorical analysis. It seemed to be more of a summary with oppinion added on to it. Way To Go Eddie.

Andres said...

It seemed more like a summary then a review. Also you could have made it a little more entertaining.

Chiqui Perez said...

I'm just concern on the typo about writing the word "waist" than waste.

IUUYHB said...

This review SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!

Unknown said...

"i saw nothing without seeing it, i heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling" what do u thing about this?

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