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 1800’s during his childhood. He grew up doing manual labor on plantations, serving under several different masters before his adulthood. Douglass was somewhere between eight and twelve years old when he first learned to read. Up until this point, Douglass was quite ignorant as to the state of slavery, and of the world in general. Learning to read allowed him insight into lots of the events of the time, and enlightened him as to his situation and the status of slavery. This fundamentally changed Douglass’s worldview from what it was formerly.

    I have a hard time finding something in my life that could have the same impact on myself that literacy had on Douglass. The sheer change that learning to read caused in Douglass’s life was astronomical, and I don’t really have anything to match it. I am unable to think of any life-altering events that completely changed my view of society in one foul swoop, as Douglass had experienced.

Overall, upon some reflection, I haven’t had any life altering events to the same degree that Fredrick Douglass described in his autobiography. Douglass learning how to read shifted his views on society to such a drastic level that he could not stop thinking about it for years. I frankly haven’t had an experience similar to that in my own life as yet.

    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.

I don’t think that the philosophy of life should always be told early in the autobiography. I think it makes a lot more sense for the philosophy of life to be explained, bit by bit, in the story of the autobiography. Then, you aren’t overwhelmed with information, and it feels like you are discovering information about the author, rather than it being told to you. It feels more authentic to experience the information in a gradual way. This is especially true, because as the author grows and develops their philosophy of life, you get to see how it has changed over the years, and how it came to be what it is, instead of being stated like a simple fact.

    In short, I think that the philosophy of life should be told how the author learned it. An authentic experience of growth, both for the reader, and for the author. I think it is a bit unintuitive to lecture to the reader blandly about how one thinks, when that very thing is going to be told slowly and thoroughly without that long introduction.

    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 of an odd book. Thoreau talked in metaphors for almost the entirety of the book, and this clouded understanding, in addition to not providing enough context for the reader to truly understand what Thoreau is trying to convey. I think Walden was an inaccurate book because it lacked context, but I also think that adding context would not make the book better. Walden would make a much better fictional work without added context than a non-fiction work (allegedly) with context.

    In conclusion, I think that Walden would be better off not adding extra context, but also not claiming to be a true story, as opposed to adding context and defeating the entire purpose of the book by telling the whole truth. Instead of creating a mediocre work with enough truth for him to claim it is non-fiction, but not enough context to make it really true. I wish Thoreau had picked one or the other.

    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 large manufacturers, rather than making them with his own two hands. This is a contradiction of his claims against the division of labor, and ought to be acknowledged when reading the book.

    Thoreau decided to do an experiment where he ‘isolated’ himself from the rest of society. In reality, this was all a myth. He bought tools from town. He went into town to gossip with friends at bars a few times a week. He didn’t even do his own laundry; he sent it down the street for his mother to wash for him. Thoreau relied on the division of labor and the mass-manufacturing of goods just as much as if he had been living anywhere besides Walden Pond. He was not isolated at all. This defeated the entire purpose of the experiment, which is likely what lead Thoreau to leave Walden Pond at the end of twenty-six months.

    Thoreau relied heavily upon the division of labor during his time at Walden Pond. Almost all of his amenities were produced by others that had experience in their respective fields, and it completely went against the concept of his experiment.

    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 use contrast in your own writing.

    First, a few ways Northup uses contrast. Northup contrasts the way he grieves his separation from his children, and the way Eliza grieves over hers. Another instance is the contrast between Northup’s different masters. He contrasts master Ford with Tibeats, and he contrasts Bass with Epps, and the like. Overall, Northup uses a lot of contrast to improve his writing and create clear descriptions and differences between characters.

    One way you can improve your own writing is by using contrasts. You can use two qualities of the things you are trying to contrast, or the entire things as a whole. For example, a quality of Eliza’s grief was her lack of will to work, and Northup was able to contrast that with his quality of having a will to work in his situation. This is different from simply saying that Eliza’s grief was more outwardly apparent than Northup’s. He goes into detail about specific qualities that he is contrasting, and that is a great way to introduce contrast into your own pieces.

    In conclusion, contrast is a great literary device for providing detailed and in-depth descriptions about people, places, or things. Northup uses this tool in a very smart way by contrasting specific qualities in addition to general facts. It is helpful to implement this writing device into your own writing because it adds depth and character to your writing, and helps it be easier to understand.

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 apart and wrenched hearts.

First, I am going to talk about how Northup responded to the separation. He, like anybody would, had deep sadness and grief for his loss, but he remained hopeful that he would be able to see his children again in the future. This hope is all that kept him strong through his captivity, and was a strong response on his part.

Eliza responded in a vastly different way. She was overwhelmed by her loss, and was unable to handle her emotions relating to the subject. Her emotional strength, unlike Northup, is weakened by this, and she has no hope on which to go on. Her physical health declines with her emotional health, and she ends up way worse off for it.

In conclusion, Northup had a very hopeful reaction to seeing his children stolen away from him, and it was able to help strengthen him through his captivity, while Eliza had a very hopeless reaction, and her health significantly suffered from the separation. An emotional toll was taken on both of the parents, and it was all a part of a cruel and unjust system, that fostered strength in some, weakness in others, and unhappiness in all.

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.

Thompson provides extensive evidence for the system of slavery being an immoral, evil mess of human discrimination. As discussed a week ago, the preventative reinforcement employed by the masters was brutal and undeserved. Even when there was a fault at hand, the masters would punish the slaves disproportionally to the offense, clearly showing immorality within their culture.

The cruel treatment of slaves after no wrongdoing is morally evil, and every culture that allowed it should be ashamed of it. Thompson provides strong evidence for this in his autobiography.

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 individual speech. I feel like an autobiography is almost jolting when you go from a (fairly) fast paced run through your life, to a crawl that lasted you a few hours, and then back up to that pace. I feel like it is boring and doesn’t communicate the topics of the speech in an appropriate manner.

    These speeches can be approached in a much better way if you’re putting them in an autobiography. All you have to do is simply summarize, rather than copying the speech verbatim. Take Booker T. Washington’s book for example; He reconstructs a speech he made to the people in Atlanta about the future of black people in our society. He repeats the speech verbatim, and it feels long and drawn out. Instead, he could have taken the bullet points he used to create the speech, and written it into a page in his autobiography instead.

    In conclusion, I think that speeches have no place in biographies. They are boring, and there are better alternatives, like summarizing the speech to make it suitable for readers instead of listeners.

    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) get a job in communications, then I can already have proof of my experience to show the employer, or I can have more practice composing actual literature instead of pointless school garbage.

    The real reason I would be writing an autobiography (or at least the beginnings of one) is to have a record of all of my important memories. One thing that scares me the most, even as a teenager, is the fact that I’m going to forget things in the future. The only reason I would ever actually follow through and write an autobiography is for myself, so that I can remember all of the little details of my life that I might not in the future. The reason mentioned in the last paragraph is really only secondary to this one.

    In short, there are two reasons I might write an autobiography in the future. One is to show employers that I know how to write, but the real reason I would do it is so that I can have a written record of all of the things that I think and feel at this point in my life.

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 tells stories from vastly different parts of his life out of order. This causes confusion, for, upon reading any given chapter, I have no clue what age Twain is. This makes the biography fell convoluted and difficult to understand.

    There are a few ways to fix this: The first is to make sure you tell your individual stories chronologically. Taking them out-of-order, as with most stories, doesn’t make any sense, and causes confusion. The second way is by trying to joint your stories together. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution for this, simply because every story is different, and it might be hard to link them together, but you have to do your best. If you are jumping through time, try and link them with the thing you are doing. Give dates to indicate how much time has passed from one story to another. These are all things you can do to simplify your autobiography and make it feel less disjointed and sporadic.

    In short, a consistent flow is important to any piece of literature, but it is especially hard when you are writing an autobiography because you can’t talk about every minute detail in your days. There have to be some time skips. You need to mitigate the effect of these time jumps as much as possible by re-introducing links between events, and introducing flow.