Douglass seemed to like figurative language, preferably metaphors. One metaphor he uses in his essay is, “mistress, in teaching me the alphabet, had given me the inch and no precaution could prevent me from taking the ell” (156). In this clever metaphor the word “ell” is an older version of the modern word “mile” and Douglass is basically saying that once he learned the alphabet he had the necessary tools to learn to fully read and expand his vast knowledge, he would stop at nothing. Another nice metaphor Douglass uses is “it opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out”. Normally the slaves were forced to be illiterate; this mass illiteracy caused the slaves to be ignorant of the situation that they were in. Douglass however was not illiterate, he could read and write, which gave him the knowledge he needed to realize that the conditions he was living in was wrong and unethical whereas the other slaves accepted it as normality. Douglass was shown how bleak and horrible his situation was through reading, but he was shown no way out.
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