Prison has the ability to force a person to confront issues within themselves that they spent their whole lives trying to run away from. Prison unlocked a world to Malcolm X that he ignorantly didn’t know existed. The narrative that literature is freeing comes from the fact that it’s the gateway to power. Malcolm X found himself rising in intelligence with every new word he learned and every book he read, “I suppose it was inevitable that as my word base broadened, I could for the first time pick up a book and read and now begin to understand what the book was saying. Anyone who has read a great deal can imagine the new world that opened.” Prison introduced X to the world of literature that freed him from the mental bondage he maintained for years. Literature is linked directly to freedom because it assists a person in gaining knowledge that would’ve once been unimaginable. If Malcolm X wouldn’t have found the strength within prison to study literature, he wouldn’t have acquired the knowledge needed to be a leading figure in the civil rights movement. Malcolm X rhetorically stated,“Where else but in a prison could I have attacked my ignorance by being able to study intensely sometimes as much as fifteen hours a day.” Ironically Malcolm X’s experience in prison was freeing because it gave him time. Growing knowledge and studying literature takes up all the time in the world, so when placed in a setting where time was endless, X turned what would’ve been a dreadful experience into a freeing one. With studying literature Malcolm found the man he was destined to be and used literature to turn himself into that man. Freedom is finding access to a mindset where anything is possible. Literature gave Malcolm X the tools to reach that state of mind.