Assignment 8 Part.I

“The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness. Freedom now appeared,  to disappear no more forever. It was. heard in every sound, and seen in everything. It was ever present to torment me with a sense of my wretched condition….It looked from every star, and it smiled in every calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm” —

• This passage gives an insight on how knowledge about the world and literature had given Douglass a hope. By not teaching slaves how to read and write, slaveholders wanted to  restrict their minds about their situations and wanted their minds t0 be consumed with labor. It’s ironic that America was founded on the idea of freedom, however, slaves were restricted to that freedom and shows that slavery in America was  a period of time when America let go of their own principles.
• It reveals that Frederick Douglass’s perspective on the world had changed and he realized his horrifying condition about slavery. Since he had gained knowledge through reading and writing, it had become his strength and weakness. He was going through a very challenging, therefore, freedom was his only hope to  survive and fight the battle.
• In terms of Frederick Douglass’s literary style, he uses a lot of imagery to familiarize readers with the situation. When he describes how freedom was with him every situation, connecting it with the wind, and storm, it shows how important it was for him to survive. Also, his writing is very straightforward which makes readers understand every detail he is trying to convey. It feels like reading a personal diary of someone since it’s very transparent about his journey as a slave and justifies the title of his book.