Reading Response F Douglass-Maimoona

Question 1: What does Douglass mean when he says that “learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing” (paragraph 5)?  Furthermore, what does he mean when he says that “freedom…was ever present to torment me” (same paragraph)?  In other words, is there a downside to becoming literate?  What might that be?

I think Douglass means when he says that learning to read had been a curse then a blessing because now he can read and write and he is found the real meaning of slavery and he is disgusted and has hatred towards his enslavers. Douglass states that ¨they are robbers who left their homes and gone to Africa¨ and stole their homes from them and brought them to slavery. He states that reading has put him in a very bad condition but did not gave any remedy. When he says “freedom…was ever present to torment me”, he means that freedom had appeared and will never disappear. He use to see, hear feel nothing without it. It was a present to torment in his worse condition but now he had to be careful.

Question 2:\

Choose one part from the reading that you think is significant; it should be a part that you think has deeper meaning.  Copy that part, enclosing it in quotation marks and giving the Paragraph number. Now analyze Douglass’s exact words in this quotation carefully and explain what is significant about this quotation.  I expect you to write a full paragraph, 5-6 sentences.

¨I often found myself regretting my own existence, and wishing myself dead; and but for the hope of being free, I have no doubt but that I should have killed myself, or done something for which I should have been killed.While in this state of mind, I was eager to hear anyone speak of slavery .I was a ready listener. Every little while, I could hear some‐thing about the abolitionists.It was some time before I found what the word meant. It was always used in such connections as to make it an interesting word to me¨.

This means that Douglass regularly found himself mourning on his own reality and wished he was dead. But he wanted to be free and he had no questions but wanted to commit suicide. He was a prepared audience, every time he would hear something about slavery. At first he didn´t knew the meaning of abolitionists. It took him a while to figure out and it was always used in contexts that was interesting to him.