For the English Major - Essay Example

02 September, Essay Review: Learning to Read & Write This essay is an excerpt from Frederick Douglass’s autobiographywhere he has described 150 year old burning issue of slavery, how the exploitation was done, how slave-owners were oblivious about slaves and his process of education that has transformed a passive slave into active social worker. After introducing the core issue of slavery, writer has presented relevant situational background which rouses the interest in the reader’s mind.

In the last paragraph of third page (178-179), he gives examples of some specific reading documents which brought out his painful feelings about the slavery issue. Writer has shown a clear picture of slavery before 150 years by demonstrating the crazy process through which he has to go for learning to read & write. In this paragraph, he shows how his intense negative feeling about the slavery became his motivation for learning to read & write. Initially, the writer shows how reading has brought discomfort in his life because he started understanding his own situation and pointed his situation with negative words like wretched condition, beast, reptile, etc.

The writer has successfully expressed his intensive hatred about the issue by using words of increasing power like abhor, detest, loathe, torment which have higher impact on the reader’s thinking about the issue.Reader completely enjoys the essay because of the live demonstration of intensive situation through rhythmic sentences like “I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling it. It looked from every star, it smiled in every calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm.

” High quality essay is offered by showing firm transformation phase with the use of non-traditional English language like “Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever.” At the end of the essay, the writer has suggested the “Possibilities For Writing” which is also done very innovatively considering the significance of writer’s opinion about the core issue of slavery & education along with development of independent opinion of the reader in changed social & economic environment.