Chapter 6 Study Guide, Due March 29

CHAPTER VI - 20 pts

QUESTIONS

1. To what does Frederick attribute the kindness of Mrs. Auld?
2. What, according to Frederick, changes her?
3. Why is Mr. Auld angry when he finds that Mrs. Auld is teaching Frederick his letters?
4. Why does Frederick call Mr. Auld’s forbidding his learning how to read “invaluable instruction” (p. 49)?
5. Why does inability to read keep men enslaved according to Frederick and to Mr. Auld?
6. What does Frederick hope to gain by learning how to read?
7. Who teaches Frederick why black men are not taught to read?
8. Why is this lesson so important to him?
9. Why is the life of a city slave so much better than the life of a plantation slave?
10. Why does Frederick relate the story of the slaves Henrietta and Mary?

QUOTES

• “If you teach that nigger (speaking of myself ) how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master” (p. 49).
• “I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty—to wit, the white man’s power to enslave the black man. It was a grand achievement, and I prized it highly. From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom” (p. 49).
• “In learning to read, I owe almost as much to the bitter opposition of my master, as to the kindly aid of my mistress. I acknowledge the benefit of both” (p. 50).
• “A city slave is almost a freeman, compared with a slave on the plantation” (p. 50).