Donovan Hernandez- Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglas

In chapter VII of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, we get an insight of what it is like for a slave to has begun to learn and yearn for knowledge. As Douglass starts learning about his current situation, he sees his masters in a much darker way. “The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers” (253). He mentions that they were robbed from their homes and were diminished to mere slaves. In the chapter Douglass also mentions that the warning that Mr. Auld said was starting to become true. “As I writhed under it, I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing.” (254) He was found out that he was being taught how to spell by the mistress and was forbidden from continuing his education because once you teach a slave how to read, they would become “unmanageable and be of no value to his master” (250). This is important because it shows that slave owners want to keep the slaves oblivious to the outside world, and their goal is to keep slaves dumb because once you start education slaves, they might start thinking that they are more than just then and try to start revoting. Therefore, Douglass starts to mention this is a curse because he knows what is being done to them, but he cannot do anything about it. It another way of saying that ignorance is bliss if they don’t know what is being done to them then it won’t hurt them.  In a previous chapter Douglass mentioned the memory of Mr. Gore and Demby, I think this was important because Mr. Gore mentioned that he shot Demby because he was setting a bad example for other slaves. If one slaves start reading and start thinking the same way Douglass is thinking, then they would all start revolting and fighting against their Master.