When one goes to prison, there is a choice that one can make. They could either be compliant and just serve there time without making any changes in there live or they could use the time to better themselves as a person. In “Literacy Behind Bars” by Malcolm X when Malcolm entered prison he was motivated to learn to read and write due to his envy of his sophisticated friend and problems with reading books and truly understanding the outside world. Throughout the course of the text, Malcolm  states that although incarcerated he has  “never had been so truly free in [his] life”. Which gives the reader a irony of a imprisoned man never being so free in his life.

The sense irony that the reader gets when associating a imprisoned man with being free is a direct result of Malcolm’s perception of literature. Malcolm’s perception of Literature correlates with Freedom because before he was imprisoned he wasn’t well taught in these areas and therefore struggled in everyday life, being more imprisoned in his everyday life due to his lack of knowledge that created limitations for him. A prisoner to his own thoughts as many would say, Malcolm states in his auto biography “But every book i picked up had few sentences which didn’t contain anywhere from one to nearly all of the words that might as well have been in Chinese”.  Showing the reader how when he would read certain things his lack of knowledge on literature would hinder his understanding of the text as if it was in a foreign language. Malcolm also stated in his auto biography,”Where else but in a prison could i have attacked my ignorance being by being able to study intensely sometimes as much as fifteen hours a day.” This quote shows the relationship of  Literature and Freedom because with Malcolm having all this time to himself that he wouldn’t usually have in the real world , he would have the time to work on his deficiency that would hold him back which was literature . There fore making the connection of the literature giving him freedom because he would now be able to function in the outside world without any of the complications that he had before.