“The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest slavery, and my enslavers… As I writhed under the sting and torment of this knowledge, I almost envied my fellow slaves their stupid contentment. This knowledge opened my eyes to the horrible pit, and revealed the teeth of the frightful dragon that was ready to pounce upon me (My Bondage and My Freedom ch. XI).”
The gift and power of an education has the ability to free a man from the conformity he lives and shows him the true reality of his situation. It allows him to question the status quo and take steps towards change.
The passage My Bondage and My Freedom shows us that education is a tool that can free man from the conformity he lives and ignites him to take actions toward change. Ernest Gaines shares this idea and Using “A Lesson Before Dying” I will show how this literary text supports this claim. I will show this connection using parts of Chapter 11 from My Bondage and My Freedom to show the moment Douglass realized that his education had allowed him to perceive the world differently from his fellow slaves. Then I will describe the importance of the wood-cutting scene in chapter 8 of “A Lesson Before Dying” to show how the main character, Grant Wiggins, comes to the same realization.
Creating this connection between Frederick Douglass and the literary text is important because it will help us understand the impact a proper education had in allowing African-Americans to stand up against conformity and fight for the right to be equal in the South.
What’s good:
You have a provocative quote.
You have a roadmap for your thesis.
Concern:
I think your hook might have been stronger if the quote was a bit shorter Right now it’s more like an epigraph before the paper than a hook in the introduction. You want to make sure you’re doing the job of framing the quote the way you want. Also I’m wondering is this quote emblematic of what you will talk about or is it actually what you will look at?
So I think you picked the kind of thesis that I said works better for your education philosophy than for your paper. For this assignment you needed to use one theory text and one literary text. You however have two literary texts. To a degree this could have worked if you had regarded one as a kind of theory text. Ultimately in this paper, your “it” should be some specific part of the literary or theory text. Your thesis should basically be how the other text ( the one that doesn’t contain your “it”) helps us to read some part of your “it” text differently or more deeply.
Your argument is essentially outside of the text: “Using “A Lesson Before Dying” I will show how this literary text supports this claim [that education frees man from conformity].” Your it here is the freeing potential of education. That’s too broad. Indeed you have set yourself up here to be dangerously abstract. While Douglass is talking about freedom of thought and personhood etc, he is also talking about physical and legal freedom. He is not just talking about conformity. He is talking about being enslaved not just by one’s self (the “self-incurred minority” of Kant) but by the state and other people.
Right now your texts are examples for an ideal outside of them. I need you to formulate a thesis that’s about the conversation between these two texts, a thesis where the stakes are really about how we understand one or both of these texts.