Learning how to read had a large impact on the life of Fredrick Douglas. I have had several impactful events and skills obtained. Attempting to find something that can match the sheer enlightenment expressed by Douglass can be difficult, but attempting it should be an interesting thought experiment. Douglass was an uneducated slave in the …
Author Archives: DJW
E9#145: Philosophy of Life Early in Autobiographies
One’s philosophy of life is something that is typically discussed in an autobiography. This is basically what the author thinks about life in general, and how they should live. This is always very important to the story told in an autobiography, and needs to be told in a way that makes sense to the reader. …
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E9#140: Walden and Backstory
Today I’m here to answer a simple question: Would Walden have been a better book, had Thoreau explained his background and his past life to add context to his experiment? I’m going to explore this idea, and why I think that adding context would not have made Walden a better book. Walden is a bit …
E9#135: Thoreau and the Division of Labor
Thoreau, in his book, Walden, had some critical beliefs about the division of labor. He claimed to be independent of it during his time on Walden Pond; yet, if you actually read the text, then you will see that Thoreau was, in fact, quite keen on using tools and the like that he purchased from …
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E9#130: Using Contrast
Northup uses a lot of contrast in his book, Twelve Years a Slave. There are several ways to incorporate contrast into your writing similarly to Northup. You either want to contrast entire entities, or specific qualities of those entities. I’m going to talk about how Northup uses contrast in his book, and how you can …
E9#120: Ten Years a Slave
Today I’m being forced to talk about how Northup and Eliza, two people referred to in Northup’s book, had different reactions to having their children separated from them. This is a theme of the book, and it uses this point a lot to show how evil the slavery system was, and how it broke families …
E9#115: Morality of Slavery
Today I’m supposed to talk about how Thompson’s narrative provided conclusive evidence for the evils of slavery. While it is quite obvious that slavery is morally evil because of the premise (people being discriminated against and forced to do things against their will because of that alone), today I will talk exclusively about Thompson’s evidence. …
E9#100: Reconstructed Speeches
I personally do not think that reconstructed speeches belong in an autobiography. Reconstructed speeches bore me in autobiographies, and I don’t think they belong there. Today I’m going to talk about some better techniques for conveying the same topics in an autobiography that you discussed in a speech. Autobiographies are much more broad than an …
E9#90: Benefits of Writing an Autobiography
Today I’m going to talk about the benefits I could gain from creating my own autobiography. There are two main benefits I could gain: Writing experience (and therefore credibility) and a sort of time-capsule. That is all I could think of. Writing experience is important because if I do decide to (go to college and/or) …
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E9#85: Disjointed Biographies
Disjointed Biographies are an issue that people can have while writing a biography. This phenomenon occurs when somebody is writing a biography and doesn’t have any link between the different stories being told in their piece of literature. The effect is multiplied if the segments are not in chronological order. In Mark Twain’s Autobiography, he …