My+Bondage+and+My+Freedom

=__My Bondage and My Freedom__=

//an analysis// //by//: Ryan Esfahani, Jeffrey Crosson, and Israel Torres
why whites did not want blacks to read and find out about the wrong doings that whites had committed. Overall he sees his mistress as a slaveholder and a friend but now knowing the wrongs that she has committed it puts a different feeling between them and taints their relationship. Having this information makes him want to fight for what is right against the whites knowing that he would be speaking against a friend. The owner seeing that the slave was learning to read by himself made her see that even in a state of enslavement anyone can do what they strive for. One major theme found in this passage is the theme of using ignorance to subjugate a group of people. Another theme is how education can set one's mind free.
 * [[image:http://ec2.images-amazon.com/images/P/0486224570.01._SS500_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg width="306" height="323"]] || __My Bondage and My Freedom__ is the autobiography of Frederick Douglass. The excerpt we have focused on details his relationship towards his slaveholder and the slave life. His mistress treated him as an equal and would do anything to let him learn how to read, but after realizing that this would end up in a revolt she deprived him of his want and need to learn. Knowing how to read and write would lead him to know the true cruelty of slavery and how his people are being used for these purposes, which were told to them to be part of the Bible teachings. He remembered how the little boys would not be able to tell the difference between a normal person and a slave and that they were not judgmental towards anyone of any race, “they did not believe God ever made anyone to be a slave." He would always tell them that one day they would be free themselves when they turned 21, but he knew that, "I will always be a slave for life." Reading a book opened his eyes, "to the horrible pit, and revealed the teeth of the frightful dragon that was ready to pounce upon me, but it opened no way for my escape" from slavery, which made him realize ||

Other themes seen in the excerpt are realism and naturalism. Realism is the treatment of subject matter that presents a careful description of everyday life, usually of the middle classes and in this case the lower class. Realism can be seen in __My Bondage and My Freedom__ when Fredrick begins to leave his ingnorace as he gains knowledge of the outside world. He begins to see the reality about slavery which his mistress had been hiding from him all along. He understands her situation but soon realizes that she was treating him like a pet, like a slave, not like a normal humanbeing. He had grown up in such ignorance, he had no idea what reality was. His use of realism in his novel depicts his clash with reallity.Naturalism is a technique of treating subject matter that presents, through volume of detail, a deterministic view of human life and actions. As a slave Fredrick Douglass gave a very naturalistic veiw of his bondage. Only a slave could look at his situation in such a calm manner and just state it how it was. He used naturalism to express the truth behind slavery that everyone should know, in an unsugarcoated tone.

A Queerly Similar Contemporary Parallel

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