Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass: Informational Text

Untitled Lesson

By Theresa Mikkelsen

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• Look for key details in the text that describe or explain important ideas, events, or individuals.

• Analyze how the text makes connections as well as distinctions among individuals, ideas, or events in a text.

• Classify and categorize facts and details to determine similarities and differences between types of information in a text.

• Identify an author’s use of anecdotes. An anecdote is a short amusing or serious story that usually serves to make readers laugh or ponder over a topic.

Identification and Application:

Multiple Choice

What is the primary purpose of categorizing facts and details in a text?

• To confuse the reader with too much information
  

• To highlight spelling and grammar errors
  

• To determine similarities and differences among ideas or events
  

• To make the text longer and more complex

Multiple Choice

Which of the following best demonstrates how an author connects ideas in a text?

• Listing unrelated facts without transitions
  

• Including a short anecdote that highlights a key theme
  

• Repeating the same word for emphasis
  

• Presenting events without explaining their impact

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Model:
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave is an autobiography, or a written account of the life of a person written by that person. Since this is a personal account, facts, details, and the author’s ideas about life play a crucial role in the text. In this excerpt, Douglass begins by relating details of what eventually became the most important incident in his life: learning to read from the white street urchins who populated his neighborhood. This key event is introduced in the very beginning of the first paragraph: “With their kindly aid, obtained at different times and at different places, I finally succeeded in learning how to read.” But this skill connects Douglass to a world of ideas that give him a voice but also weigh heavily on him.

Multiple Choice

How does Frederick Douglass use an anecdote in this excerpt to help readers understand the impact of learning to read?

• He tells a humorous story to entertain readers.
  

• He describes a memory of learning to read from white children to show how difficult school was.
  

• He shares a personal story about how reading gave him knowledge but also emotional pain.
  

• He lists several books he read to prove he was educated.

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He connects his memory of acquiring the ability to read with its outcome by sharing an anecdote with readers:

I was now about twelve years old, and the thought of being a slave for life began to bear heavily upon my heart. Just about this time, I got hold of a book entitled “The Columbian Orator.” Every opportunity I got, I used to read this book. Among much of other interesting matter, I found in it a dialogue between a master and his slave. The slave was represented as having run away from his master three times. The dialogue represented the conversation which took place between them, when the slave was retaken the third time. In this dialogue, the whole argument in behalf of slavery was brought forward by the master, all of which was disposed of by the slave. The slave was made to say some very smart as well as impressive things in reply to his master—things which had the desired though unexpected effect; for the conversation resulted in the voluntary
emancipation of the slave on the part of the master.

Multiple Choice

How does the anecdote about "The Columbian Orator" help illustrate the impact of reading on Douglass?

• It shows that Douglass used books to escape physically from slavery.
  

• It demonstrates how reading led Douglass to question slavery and understand arguments against it.
  

• It proves that Douglass had already decided to become a writer.
  

• It explains that Douglass was punished for reading the book.

Multiple Choice

Why was the conversation between the master and the slave in The Columbian Orator so powerful to Frederick Douglass?

• It showed the slave being punished, which made Douglass fearful of reading.
  

• It was the first time Douglass read a story about a slave being treated kindly.
  

• It gave strong arguments against slavery and showed a slave convincing his master to set him free.
  

• It helped Douglass understand how to escape slavery physically.

​“Just about this time,” Douglass writes, “I got hold of a book entitled “The Columbian Orator.” This sentence alerts the reader that Douglass is about to begin relating an anecdote about something he read that changed his outlook. He used to discuss “this matter of slavery” with the street urchins, and in the book he read about a slave who “was made to say some very smart as well as impressive things in reply to his master.” These very smart and impressive things had an unexpected result: the master freed his slave.

Multiple Choice

What makes the story Douglass read in The Columbian Orator an important anecdote in his life story?

• It entertained him during his free time as a child.
  

• It gave him hope and new ways to think and talk about slavery.
  

• It showed that even masters could be kind if slaves behaved well.
  

• It helped him learn how to write his own speeches.

​Douglass summarizes the key idea of the slave’s conversation with his master: “In this dialogue, the whole argument in behalf of slavery was brought forward by the master, all of which was disposed of by the slave.” Here, Douglass drives home the point that had such an effect on him: that a slave could reason persuasively against the practice of slavery, even when the case for this practice was argued by a wealthy, educated slave owner. He was pleased by that fact, even though it would open a floodgate of despair for him the more he thought about it.

Multiple Choice

Why did the slave’s ability to argue against slavery have such a strong effect on Douglass?

• It made him afraid that educated slaves would be punished.
  

• It convinced him that slavery was not as bad as he thought.
  

• It made him want to stop reading and forget what he had learned.

• It showed him that a slave could be more powerful with words than a master with status.
  

​Read this section from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave to identify how Douglass makes connections between key ideas and events in the text, and answer the following questions.   

​In the same book, I met with one of Sheridan’s mighty speeches on and in behalf of Catholic emancipation. These were choice documents to me. I read them over and over again with unabated interest. They gave tongue to interesting thoughts of my own soul, which had frequently flashed through my mind, and died away for want of utterance. The moral which I gained from the dialogue was the power of truth over the conscience of even a slaveholder. What I got from Sheridan was a bold denunciation of slavery, and a powerful vindication of human rights.

​The reading of these documents enabled me to utter my thoughts, and to meet the arguments brought forward to sustain slavery; but while they relieved me of one difficulty, they brought on another even more painful than the one of which I was relieved. The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers.

Multiple Choice

What connection does Douglass make between his present state of mind and the anecdote he includes in his narrative?

• His ideas of emancipation died away.

• Douglass was relieved after reading arguments in support of slavery.

• He realizes that truth has power over conscience.

• Douglass explains why he decided to become a Catholic.

Multiple Choice

Which sentence from the paragraph provides text support for your answer?

• “In the same book, I met with one of Sheridan’s mighty speeches on and in behalf of Catholic emancipation.”

• “The reading of these documents enabled me to utter my thoughts, and to meet the arguments brought forward to sustain slavery.”

• “They gave tongue to interesting thoughts of my own soul, which had frequently flashed through my mind, and died away for want of utterance.”

• “The moral which I gained from the dialogue was the power of truth over the conscience of even a slaveholder.”