Frederick Douglass: Literacy and Freedom.
Frederick Douglass grows from a slave boy to a freed man throughout Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and he uses this transition and identity to provide an outlet to which the reader can identify. Douglass first produces this with the absence of dates in his writing. Slaves were kept ignorant when it came to the real world, sometimes not even knowing the year of their birth, preventing the knowledge of a captive's real age. A birthday is something with which to identify you, especially in youth. By lacking the knowledge of dates and time, Douglass seems to lack a sense of being. .
Eventually, he is provided a window of opportunity to not only learn dates and a sense of time, but also gain a general feel for knowledge as well. A new mistress takes it upon herself to teach Douglass the alphabet, opening up the thirst for knowledge that each of us has deep inside of us. When this open door of knowledge was permanently closed, Douglass said "it was a new and special revelation, explaining dark and mysterious things, with which my youthful understanding had struggled, but struggled in vain. I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty-to wit, the white mans power to enslave the black man. It was a grand achievement and I prized it highly. From that moment I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom."" (Douglass 364). .
Douglass was learning and he didn't want to give it up. It is easy to see how much he valued knowledge by his ironclad will to keep the door of knowledge open. Douglass identifies himself as a grown child, forced down by circumstances beyond his control. He is growing, he is learning, he is maturing, and like a small child asking question after question, he will not rest until his thirst for knowledge is quelled. As he gains more and more knowledge, his want of knowledge and curiosity grow, and as he is satisfied in this aspect, his desperate want of freedom grows.
