Frederick Douglass Rhetorical Analysis

Douglass articulates his understanding of the hypocrisy of Southern “Christians” who whip slaves, prostitute female slaves, and steal the wages of working slaves while professing Christian values of humility, purity, and morality.

Religion, in this case, Christianity, had two different practices: the slaves, color people, believed one version of Christianity, while, the masters, White Americans, believed in another version of Christianity. He explains that the masters used Christianity as an excuse to the cruel ways they treated slaves. Christianity no doubt helped the slaves achieve grace, but the Christianity that the masters were practicing allowed no enthusiasm. When slavery reached its peak, Christianity was the dominant religion in the United States. However, according to Douglass, there was “the Christianity of Christ” and “the Christianity of this land.” What Douglass is merely trying to say is, masters and slaveholders alone imply no distinctive goodness. It is hypocritical to practice “Christianity of Christ” if one puts another to excessive labor without enough food, rest, stripping privileges, beating another, and murdering. On Douglass’s part, it seemed puzzling to understand why some would act such way under the Christian faith. Under god’s allegiance, what humane actions such as beating, killing, and starving a person become justified? Thus, it can be assumed that Christianity had a devastating influence on

By stating all these facts about what the slaves have to go through Douglass sends his audience through a whirlwind of emotions. He goes into explaining this and it starts to make the audience feel the pain that he and slaves had to go through. Slavery is not something that God intended to be a thing. “What, then remains to be argued. Is it that slavery is not divine; the God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken?”(Douglass). Slavery was created and thought up by and evil part of mankind. When Douglass states that God did not establish it, it's

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself is a powerful book in many respects. Douglass invites you to vicariously witness the monstrous atrocities he experienced during the antebellum period; a time when said atrocities were not only encouraged, but looked highly upon. Throughout his narrative, Douglass expresses his exponentially growing anger and fortitude. When the reader arrives at The Appendix, it soon becomes that much more apparent that the vice of slavery that is most troublesome to him, is the curtain of pseudo-Christianity surrounding it. Why did Douglass, against the advice of his publisher, decide to include this radical piece? Douglass was adamant about including The Appendix

Actually, it made him even more cruel and hateful and he made greatest pretensions to piety. He remained as a cruel slaveholder, but he prayed everyday and he proved himself an instrument in the hands of the church in converting many souls (Douglass, p. 77). However, his unconvincing performance and pretending as a Christian made him even crueler. Also, since he was a slaveholder and a Christian, he couldn’t avoid having a double life. He was a mean and cruel master and a hypocrite for his slaves, but he was a faithful Christian for other white Christians. His cruelty and double life are showing readers how slavery can impact the slaveholders in a negative way.

Throughout the biography it seems as if Douglass is condemning Christianity, or more so christian slave owners. They use the religion to further their purposes, by using it as a source of hypocrisy and a drive for cruelty. There are various examples throughout the book of Christian slave owner twisting the religion to justify them being unusually cruel to slaves.

In other words, Frederick Douglass does not hate nor blame the Christian Church, he loathes those who use it as an excuse to justify their actions. Their religion does not dictate their persona, there are good Christians and there are bad Christians.

The brutality that slaves endured form their masters and from the institution of slavery caused slaves to be denied their god given rights. In the "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass," Douglass has the ability to show the psychological battle between the white slave holders and their black slaves, which is shown by Douglass' own intellectual struggles against his white slave holders. I will focus my attention on how education allowed Douglass to understand how slavery was wrong, and how the Americans saw the blacks as not equal, and only suitable for slave work. I will also contrast how Douglass' view was very similar to that of the women in antebellum America, and the role that Christianity played in his life as a slave and then

Since before the time of Jesus Christ, religious hypocrisy has run rampant throughout those who held power. Countless lives have been affected by others twisting religious interpretation in order to fit their own needs. Slaveholders used religion and scripture to their advantage when disciplining slaves, sometimes even if they did no wrong. Religious hypocrisy is especially relevant in the life of Frederick Douglass. Frederick Douglass’s life story depicts how religious hypocrisy committed by both slaves and slaveholders diminished the rights of slaves, while at the same time allowing injustice to endure.

Fredrick Douglass took on detestable treatment from his slave masters, both Christian and non-Christian. Through this horrific time in slavery, Douglass told what it’s like to be a black slave, under the rule of white men. The Christian slave masters would use the Bible to back up their abuse to the slaves; they did not use the Scripture in context. The non-Christian slave masters beat their slaves to their heart’s content, no matter what. Douglass believed it to be wrong for someone to beat up a slave. Throughout his life, Douglass took a stand for his own personal life and other’s lives as well, to show equality between the white and the black. As Fredrick Douglass describes his repugnance of slavery through his personal life, he also

This is hypocritical in that the white men make these values and traditions a staple of their lives, yet when it comes to slaves, they seem to go away. He also believes that, though he will use “the severest language”(Douglass) he can, he firmly believes that “not one word shall escape me that any man whose… not blinded by prejudice, or… a slave-holder, shall not confess to be right and just”(Douglass). So he sincerely believes that the average human being also knows that the treatment of slaves is unjust and unethical, but they choose not to act on these thoughts. His view, coming from the eyes and thoughts of slaves across America, show how hypocritical the nation actually is in both one sided values and not acting upon their knowledge that what is going on is wrong.

Fredrick Douglass and Henry Melville both critique Christianity as it was practiced in 19th-century America. Douglass illuminates the aspect of Christianity in relation to the way Christians also uphold the institution of slavery. He views it has ironic that those who claim the Christian faith also believe that there is nothing wrong in the practice of slavery. Douglass questions how one can be a true Christian and still not see that slavery in morally and religiously wrong. He ultimately critiques the way people practice the faith and still uphold slavery. Douglass goes as far to say that the slave master’s even become crueler when they find religion, because then they feel as if they can do no wrong. As Douglass states in relation to slavery and religion, “Here we have religion and robbery the allies of each other – devils dressed in angels’ robes, and hell presenting the semblance of paradise.”

Frederick Douglass, abolitionist and former slave, endured a painful life as an enslaved person and in his memoir, he addressed that the worst treatment often came from Christian masters. Douglass also explained that his critics always referred to what he called the “Christianity of the South”. He did this because he did not want to generalize as he respected true Christians but he strongly condemned those who used to call themselves Christians and were mean to enslaved people. In the memoir, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Douglas says, “Between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference—so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject

Douglass shows that people who claimed to be moral Christians were torturers of humans. He presents the irony of this situation in the book. "His (the master's) house was the preachers' home. They (the preachers) used to take great pleasure in coming there to put up; for while he starved us, he stuffed them."(40-41) Douglass is presenting his audience with the two faces of the slave holder's version of Christianity; the selfish greed hidden behind piousness. In addition to this Douglass also makes sarcastic descriptions of people and places, describing how un-Christian they were by calling them Christian. "(I)t is almost an unpardonable offense to teach slaves to read in this Christian county."(32)

Douglass’s narrative is a courageous work, as it confronts the slavery institution, and the misuse of Christianity by the slave owners