Blog Post 2

With many of the texts that we have discussed in class, one commonality in them has been a theme of facing challenges thrown at them by oppressive forces. For example, when Mandela had to combat all the things that the prison system threw at him, when Frederick Douglass tried to learn to read even though it being illegal, and Martin Luther King Jr. discussing all the challenges he’s been facing that led up to him being thrown in jail. These are cases where the narrator takes a first-person point of view and gives the reader a fully detailed experience of what troubles they went through. 

Chapter six of Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, “Long Walk to Freedom” focuses a lot on the challenges that the prison wardens put him through to make his stay at prison tougher. Mandela being a big-name political prisoner means he was treated worse than most other prisoners who are just regular convicted criminals and often wardens pitted the notorious criminals to torment the political prisoners, “To counterbalance the effect of these new political allies, the authorities also put a few common-law prisoners in our section... Their role was to act as agents provocateurs, and they would attempt to push us around, take our food, and inhibit any political discussions we tried to have (p. 76)”. Mandela also had to try to better their prison life not only for him, but all his other fellow prisoners as well “I demanded to see the head of the prison to make a list of complaints... I insisted that all African prisoners must have long pants (p.76).” Mandela’s perseverance through prison helped him combat everything that he had to face there.  

In Frederick Douglass’ autobiography, “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave”, he goes through the many trials and tribulations of learning to read and become educated as a slave. For Douglass to improve his reading skills after his owner disallowed Douglass to be taught, he had to resort to tricks to further his knowledge “The plan which I adopted, and the one by which I was the most successful, was that of making friends of all the little white boys whom I met in the street... This bread that I used to bestow upon the hungry little urchins, who, in return would give that more valuable bread of knowledge (p.333)”. Douglass using such methods to learn shows how much he valued learning to read even at a young age. Although at times, Douglass wished that he was like many other slaves who could not read, “I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy (p.334)”. Douglass throughout his autobiography describes his problems he encountered while being a slave who knew more than many others in the same situation as him. 

Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” tells of his troubles with everything that led to him being put in jail. King tells of how the laws are immoral and compares them to many other laws that have been publicly seen as unjust. “Let us turn to a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a majority inflicts on a minority that is not binding on itself (p.3)”. He then uses various examples, most notably laws in Hitler’s Germany that were for imprisoning and inhumane treatment of Jews. King’s examples give his own argument much more weight and make his arguments quite difficult to argue against. Throughout the letter, King’s rhetoric is some of the best in any piece of writing when he argues against many of the wrongdoings in opposition of his position.