Read the following excerpt from Douglass' narrative from page 180 in your textbook. Then answer the question at the end: Douglass learned to read and got his hands on whatever material he could find. He came across the publication called The Columbian Orator, in which a copy of Richard Sheridan's work (a Catholic reformer), argues for the equality of all Catholics in the U.K., which at the time were not treated well. In this section Frederick Douglass relates how the arguments in Sheridan's work, enable him to see his own situation with new understanding.
"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. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery. I loathed them as being the meanest as well as the most wicked of men. As I read and contemplated the subject, behold! that very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish. As I writhed under it, 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. "
(Douglass 180-181).
Question: What did reading the works of Sheridan cause Douglass to realize about the effects of learning to read?
a) The readings gave him language to utter his thoughts. He now had the language to put his thoughts together and consider his own situation with new eyes, even if his new understanding of his condition was painful.
b) Sheridan's essays and plays were boring and did not relate to his situation at all as they were all about the Irish Catholic situation in the UK.
c) Reading was difficult as he didn't have a teacher, and he knew if he got caught he'd be punished harshly.