Frederick Douglass Dialectical Journal Essay

For example,  in chapter three, Douglass describes the obsessive attention his former master, Colonel Lloyd, paid to his horses. If the slaves in charge of caring for the horses made any mistakes, Lloyd would beat them. Douglass uses irony to show that Lloyd treats his animals better than he treats the human slaves. Another example, in chapter two is, “There were no beds given the slaves, unless one coarse blanket be considered such, and none but the men and women had these. This, however, is not considered a very great privation. They find less difficulty from the want of beds, than from the want of time to sleep.”(25) Douglass’ use of irony here accentuates the sorrow of the slaves situation.

     The tone established in the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is unusual in that from the beginning to the end the focus has been shifted. In the beginning of the narrative Douglass seems to fulfill every stereotypical slavery theme. He is a young black slave who at first cannot read and is very naïve in understanding his situation. As a child put into slavery Douglass does not have the knowledge to know about his surroundings and the world outside of slavery. In Douglass’ narrative the tone is first set as that of an observer, however finishing with his own personal accounts.

Frederick Douglass, the author of the Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass was a self-taught slave that was able to escape the brutality of slavery in the year of 1838. Frederick Douglass’s book is separated into 3 main sections, including, a beginning, middle, and end. The purpose of the narrative is to improve the audience's understanding of Douglass’s experience of being a slave, the horrible treatment slaves received, and how Douglass was able to overcome and escape slavery. All throughout the narrative, Douglass uses many rhetorical devices, including, diction, imagery, and syntax, which helps the audience understand, one of his main chapters, chapter 5. In this chapter Douglass implies that the overall purpose is to emphasize the animalistic, inhuman treatment slaves received, how Douglass felt about leaving Colonel Lloyd’s plantation, and his luck of being able to move to Mr. and Mrs. Auld's.

To continue his persuasion, Douglass uses selection of detail and different tones to make his view known. When describing some aspects of slavery, Douglass’ use of detail opens society’s eyes to injustice. In one case, when describing the whipping of his Aunt Hester, he includes details that encompass sight- “the warm, red blood… came dripping to the floor,” sound- “amid heart-rending shrieks,” and emotion- “I was so horror-stricken… I hid myself in a closet” (Douglass, 24). By including facts covering many senses, he provides the reader a chance to piece together the scene, giving them perspective. If society has all the details, it becomes easier for them to pass an accurate judgment of slavery. His detail, or lack thereof,

As a young child, Frederick Douglass was introduced to the acts of violence towards the slaves including the all too common whippings. He says, “I have often been awakened at the down of day by the most heart-rendering shrieks of an own aunt of mine, whom he used to tie up to a joist, and whip upon her naked back till she was literally covered with blood.” One could only imagine the horrid pictures that slaves would have seen on a daily basis of other slaves nearly being beaten to death by their masters. For the black children growing up on the plantation, the master was seen to be a man of great power and not to be taken lightly. This was exactly

The purpose behind Fredrick Douglass’s Narrative was to appeal to the other abolitionists who he wanted to convince that slave owners were wrong for their treatment of other human beings. His goal was to appeal to the middle-class people of that time and persuade them to get on board with the abolitionist movement. Douglass had a great writing style that was descriptive as well as convincing. He stayed away from the horrific details of the time, which helped him grasp the attention of the women who in turn would convince their husbands to help by donating money and eventually ending slavery. He used his words effectively in convincing the readers that the slave owners were inhuman and showed how they had no feelings for other human

Throughout the narration, Douglass has tried to maintain the flow using the techniques of realism and irony in order to present his themes. The reader can observe his helplessness for misery of the slaves from the quoted incidents. For example in the very first chapter, Douglass recalls the incident of his Aunt Hester who is

Douglass's descriptions of the severity of slave life are filled with horrific details able to reach even the coldest hearts. The beginning of the narrative tells of how Douglass lacks one of the most celebrated identities of humans - the knowledge of ones own age. "I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave is an account of Frederick Douglass’ life written in a very detached and objective tone. You might find this tone normal for a historical account of the events of someone’s life if not for the fact that the narrative was written by Frederick Douglass himself. In light of the fact that Douglass wrote his autobiography as a treatise in support of the abolishment of slavery, the removed tone was an effective tone. It gave force to his argument that slavery should be done away with.

For Douglass, the most memorable and emotion-provoking incident was the treatment of his grandmother. When she became too old to work, she, after a lifetime of faithful service to the family, was left helpless and alone in a shack in the woods to fend for herself. “They took her to the woods, built her a little hut, put up a little mud-chimney, and then made her welcome to the privilege of supporting herself in perfect loneliness; thus virtually turning her out to die!” (Douglass 51) Throughout his narrative, Douglass applied he rhetorical strategy of Pathos repeatedly and to great effect to promote and validate his view that slavery is morally wrong.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, brings to light many of the social injustices that colored men, women, and children all were forced to endure throughout the nineteenth century under Southern slavery laws. Douglass's life-story is presented in a way that creates a compelling argument against the justification of slavery. His argument is reinforced though a variety of anecdotes, many of which detailed strikingly bloody, horrific scenes and inhumane cruelty on the part of the slaveholders. Yet, while Douglas’s narrative describes in vivid detail his experiences of life as a slave, what Douglass intends for his readers to grasp after reading his narrative is something much more profound. Aside from all the

Frederick Douglass’ biography revolves around the idea of freedom. After seeing a traumatizing incident as a child, Douglass slowly begins to realize that he is not a free human being, but is a slave owned by other people. He is surrounded by a society that devalues him and people like him, and systematically worked to keep them ignorant and submissive. In this society, it is made clear that no slave is special, and everyone is replaceable. Rather than accept this, Douglass struggles to maintain what little autonomy he was allowed to have. When his one of his masters, Thomas Auld, bans his mistress, Sophia, from teaching Douglass how to read, Douglass learned from the young boys on the street. His biography shows him transforming from an ignorant child into his older, more learned self.

The story begins by Douglass being separated from his mother after he is born. Captain Anthony, who is suspected in being Frederick's father, is the clerk of an extremely wealthy man named Colonel Lloyd. The colonel owns hundreds of slaves, who call his plantation the “Great House Farm.” and the slaves that break the rules are beaten or whipped. Because Douglass is only a child, his life on the plantation isn’t as hard. When he turns seven he is given to captain Anthony’s son-in-law’s brother who has a plantation in Baltimore. In baltimore, Frederick has a more free life in general because in the city slave owners are much more conscious of appearing cruel towards their slaves. Because Sophia Auld, Hugh’s wife, has never had slaves before, she is nice to Frederick in the beginning.

Douglass beguines his autobiography with what he can remember of his birth. He explains that being a slave he does not remember his birthday or even the year he was born. He does, however, have knowledge of who his mother was and how he met her only a few times until her death when he was around four or five years old. He writes about how his mother would walk twelve miles at night from a neighboring plantation to spend time with him but all he would do is sleep in her arms so he really did not have any parental relationship. Douglass was told that his father was a white man but it seems to make little deference in his life but tells how offspring of whites were often sold to avoid wrath of the white wife. Douglass goes on to explain how slave children are raised to be better slaves by the act of separation at birth, and being allowed to roam the plantation until old enough to work the fields, given little food and no clothing, shoes or blankets. Douglass describes, in horrid detail, watching his Aunt Hester brutally whipped by his master, the first of many atrocities he describes to readers throughout his book. Douglass explains how the witnessing of his Aunt Hester being whipped is the end of his childhood and the start of his understanding of what being a slave meant. Douglass continues with describing the details of slavery on large plantations in the state of Maryland. Children were left naked without shoes and were fed food in troughs like animals. After finishing

To begin with, the battering of the workers within the white owners’ farms is a clear indication that there is slavery. Douglass severally went to war with the whites in the farms which he was working on due to the way they looked down on them and were mistreated. The northern states had stated that slavery has come into the end, but after the expansion of the cotton farms within the southern region, the acts of slavery were progressive. Douglass gives the expression of how he was separated by from his mother and the mistreating she saw his aunt getting. The aspect that he thinks that his father was white is also an uphold of the slavery within the region in the 19th. His mother being black it shows the sexual molest