Freedom of the Mind
..., that if they were treating a slave like anyone else they would be no better than the slaves. Whenever Douglass had the chance he would read whatever he could get his handson. In town he would learn of current events from children he knew, the children did not seem to care that he was a slave but just another little boy. Douglass would often comment to the children of how he wished he too could be free. "You will be free as soon as you are twenty-one, but I am a slave for life!" (Douglass, pg.126) The more he read the more he became aware of his position as a slave in society. "The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. The book he read the most was "The Columbian Orator" which depicted the relationship between slave and their master. I could regard them in no light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone into Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery." (Douglass, pg.127) As Douglass knew how to read he began to aspire to learn how to write. He started to learn how to write by studying the letters on pieces of timber at Durgin and Bailey's ship-yard. The timbers were marked with letters that indicated where they were to be placed on a ship in production. Another way he would learn to write new words was: he would tell other boys that he could spell better than them, they in turn would try and ...