Ramirez, Sarah

English 102-33

In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Frederick Douglass

explains his long process of learning how to read and write and gain knowledge that not many
slaves are privy to. In The New Organon, Francis Bacon talks about the intricacies and faults
of the human mind and character. In The Oedipus Complex, Sigmund Freud discusses a theory
he has about a boy growing up and having the impulse to want to kill their father and sleep with
their mother and also about dreams in general. In Majoring in Debt, Adolph Reed talks about
her opinion that higher education should be free of cost to all. To improve humanity we need
determination, order, and confidence but this improvement will bring new ideas sparked by
imagination and education; first, to prevent the dreams of education from dying, we need great
determination, and with this determination we can not only prevent the failure of dreams but
make a great change, this change and determination can give someone more confidence and
understanding, the process of continuing on with ideas and wishes that are no longer unheard
brings a new order to your life, with this new order and perspective there will eventually be a
spark of new ideas and give us new dreams to work towards, and finally, when dreaming we see
things that are filled more quickly by our imagination.
Freud says that some dreams, like the death of a known person can be interpreted as a
worry about the safety of the person concerned but is really a repressed and unsuspected
wish (127). The dream of a loved one being killed is explained here to be the minds way of
showing someone their unspoken wish for that person to actually be dead. According to Reed,

the value of education is slowly becoming less and less important and as a result classrooms
become more crowded, and as we see much more frequently now students have fewer courses
to choose from (3). The problem of students not having as much classes and classrooms being
too full is due to the value of education being dropped considerably over the years. It seems like
the government is starting to care much less about education and could be thought of by some
people as wishing to pay as little amount of money on education as they can. People wish loved
ones would die in their dreams and the government wishes to pay as little on education as they
can. So for some people, the dream of education is dying. To prevent the dreams of education
from dying, we need great determination.
Bacon says that when we have an opinion, our human understanding naturally draws all
things else to support and agree with it, and we dont think about the opposing views, just all
evidence and ideas to support our opinion (12). Human understanding is explained here to be
goal-driven to find all supporting ideas to complement our own opinions and arguments in
contrast to how we should be thinking. To give a good credible argument we should find all
arguments to disprove our opinions so we are better able to support ourselves.Douglass says that
the words he heard his master say called into existence an entirely new train of thought, and
that the learning he was doing wasnt intended to bring about these thoughts, but his masters
fears unintentionally did (60). Hearing that his learning might give him an advantage over his
master gave Douglass a new-found strength to do anything he could to learn as well as he could.
Human understanding is shown to support our own opinions at all costs and we can get
determination from anothers strong opinion. Human understanding can give great
determination. With this determination we can not only prevent the failure of dreams but make a
great change.

Reed says that the president made the rich wealthier by making unsubsidized loans
available to all students, changing the definition of need, and increasing the limits for subsidized
loans (2). By making these changes, the poor get less and the wealthy get more. Freud says that
even knowing it was the right thing to do, Hamlet realizes he himself is literally no better than
the sinner whom he is to punish and he cant kill the man that deserves to die (126). The
wealthy wanted more money and so the president made that possible through these changes and
Hamlet wanted the man who killed his father to be dead, but he couldnt. Change requires
determination. This change and determination can give someone more confidence and
understanding.
Reed says that public colleges are caring less about their students by increasing tuition to
already underprivileged people and not provid[ing] a quality education to all who qualify (3).
Public colleges are not providing a fair chance to everyone who wants to go even if they are fully
qualified to learn. Douglass says that the new ideas he was having were recurring ideas that had
frequently flashed through [his] mind, and died away for want of utterance (68). His ideas no
longer died, he was now able to voice his ideas. When someone knows they are fully qualified to
learn, their ideas no longer die nor are unheard. The process of continuing on with ideas and
wishes that are no longer unheard brings a new order to your life.
Douglass says that the idea of freedom had changed him forever and had roused [his]
soul to eternal wakefulness (75). Knowing about freedom had changed him forever. Bacon says
that human understanding naturally tries to suppose the existence of more order and regularity
in the world than it finds, even when there isnt any (13). Our understanding will try to make
sense of a situation by seeing more order in it than chaos. Seeing order in things will change a

persons perspective. Our new perspective will eventually spark new ideas and give us new
dreams to work towards.
Bacon says that when our minds are filled more quickly by things our human
understanding feigns and supposes all other things to be somehow, though it cannot see how,
similar to those few things by which it is surrounded (13). When our mind is filled quickly and
completely into something else, we think that other things are similar to that idea. Freud says that
our repressed wishes sometimes bypass censorship and and [pass] into the dream without
modification (127). Our dreams are sometimes exactly about what we are worrying about or
hoping for. When dreaming we see things that are filled more quickly by our imagination.
The improvement and new path humanity could take could be inspired from a simple step
of processes. This whole process starts with determination, not everything can be solved by
determination, but it can almost always lead to some kind of change. This change can be
anything from a change of mind to a complete change of situation and even life. When
someones life changes for the better there is always a shift in their demeanor, whether it be
could or bad depending on their situation is one thing, but usually when their life changes for the
better, someone can be gain new confidence and understanding. When someone gains new
confidence, they get a new chance to follow some of the ideas and dreams they had previously
left behind, and this new path will give a whole new order to someones life. When someone gets
a new order and perspective we start to dream of not only past ideas but get new ones, of things
we maybe would not have thought of before but nevertheless, new and sometimes very
imaginative.