Herman Melville And Frederick Douglass

Douglass and President Lincoln agreed that slavery needed to be abolished and the Nation needed to be united as one. Lincoln realized that he needed to bring in Frederick Douglass; the combination of a strong and influential black leader and the President of the United States could now create a cohesive group of abolitionists and the Union. Frederick Douglass realized that President Lincoln’s own personality and political judgment would help him free slaves across the country. Realizing each other’s strengths, both men were able to be effective through the use strong actions and powerful words of one another; their relationship played a key role in changing the nations views on slavery and race.

Slavery is a humongous topic involving both slaves and former slaves. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave Story is one such story. Douglass suffered punishments, and watching others get punished, he uses those experiences to make his argument against slavery.Douglass’ tone in the narrative is sarcastic and dark. Frederick Douglass successfully uses vast quantities of rhetorical devices, illuminating the horror and viciousness of slavery, including the need to eliminate it.

     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.

In 1619, when the first Africans were brought into Jamestown, Virginia to aid in the production of crops on the farms of Caucasian landowners, a period in our country’s dark history began, and with it a struggle for equality and freedom. For over 200 years, slavery consumed the United States, compelling blacks to long and later fight for the freedom their fair skinned counterparts had stripped from them. Decades later, the oppression of black rights marked the beginning of another struggle; one for basic rights that the black population had been denied. During these struggles, several names would come to mind for their achievements and efforts against racism and slavery, names like Frederick Douglass and Anne Moody. Frederick Douglass paved his own road to freedom while Anne Moody put her life on the line fighting for the rights that she knew she deserved. Although time frames apart, both Frederick Douglass and Anne Moody were able to resist and fight racism due to their thirst for knowledge, the help they extended towards other blacks, and their faith in succeeding despite previous failures.

In this excerpt from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Frederick Douglass employs three distinct styles in each of the paragraphs. Paragraphs one and two have a somewhat similar style, while the style in paragraph three is drastically different. Douglass is released from his need to tell and simply shows us his internal dialogue in the third paragraph. The literary devices he uses to help make this contrast are distinct. Douglass moves away from an organized, intellectual style to a more lurching, frantic one. This change in styles is extremely effective in furthering Douglass’s rhetorical purpose, which is to evoke disgust in slavery. Douglass tells his story in the first two paragraph, but reveals the inner workings of his mind in paragraph three. This shows how being a slave impacted his psyche. Douglass shows his mind, one of a damaged, desperate slave. This is extremely effective. Douglass provides yet another window through which to look and discover horrors of slavery through the impact of it on the state of one’s mind.

In the narrative excerpt “Learning to Read and Write” (1845), which originally came from the autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass recapitulates his journey into the coming of literacy that shifts his point to how slavery really is. Douglass develops and supports his main idea by providing a flashback of his own experience as a slave learning to read and write and through dialogue with rhetorical appeals, such as ethos, pathos, and logos. Douglass’ apparent purpose is to retell his story of the obstacles he faced to finally become a free man to guide and prompt other fellow slaves to finally take action for their freedom; he also wants to establish a foundation in which people of higher power, such as abolitionists, are more aware of the slavery situation. The intended audience for this excerpt is the general public of the time consisting of fellow slaves, slave owners, and abolitionists; the relationship Douglass establishes with the audience is equivalent to a news reporter and the people receiving the message—he exposes the truth to them.

“Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men 's skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact” (Lyndon B. Johnson). Frederick Douglas and Herman Melville lived in the same time for almost the same length of time. Herman Melville lived from August, 1819 – September 28, 1891, while Frederick Douglass lived from February, 1818 – February 20, 1895. Yet these two narratives couldn’t have been more different. While taking a look at the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas and Benito Cerano we can see these two insights of their world. I will be delving into how these two narratives show the condoning of racialized slavery, the endorsing of rebellion, and their individual perspectives. There is one thing that combines these two and that is their education. Education is what shifts the mind from the mind of a brute regardless of color to the level of where color and racism don’t exist.

Early American Literature reflects many conflicting differences in the presentation of slavery during that time period. Through the two chosen texts, the reader is presented with two different perspectives of slavery; Frederick Douglass’s narrative provides a look at a slave’s life through the eyes if a slave while Benito Cereno showcases the tale of a slave uprising from the viewpoint of the slave owner.. Benito Cereno’s work shows the stereotypical attitude towards African-American slaves and the immorality of that outlook according to Douglass’s narrative. Cereno portrays the typical white slave owner of his time, while Douglass’ narrative shows the thoughts of the slaves. The two stories together show that white Americans are oblivious to the ramifications and overall effects of slavery. These texts assist a moralistic purpose in trying to open up America’s eyes to the true nature of slavery by revealing it’s inhumanity and depicting the cruelty that was allowed.

Mark Twain and Frederick Douglass, two of America’s greatest 19th-century narrative writes could hardly have been more different in tone and viewpoint. Mark Twain lived in a somnolent river town, growing up enjoying adventures with his childhood friends. This was vastly different from Frederick Douglass bleak exitinstance growing up as slave on a plantation who was very deprived of food, warmth, and family. Both authors write about their childhoods, but this is where the similarities stop. Twain's lighthearted tone and subjective point of view are meant to entertain. Unlike Douglass's serious tone and objective description support his purpose of informing the public about the evils of slavery.

Frederick Douglass and Mark Twain are both extraordinary writers from the 1800’s. On a path of uncertainty for happiness, both writers share their stories on the adventure to better their lives. Mark Twain shares his story in “Life on the Mississippi” on fulfilling his want of becoming a steamboat, and what it took for him to get there. Frederick Douglass showcases a personal story in “Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave” which is about his life from living on the Colonel Lloyd’s plantation to being moved to Baltimore. Both of these stories compare in ways of being excited for the upcoming future and getting out of the inferior stances they were in. These writers both use subjective literature to imply a emotional

Last week Conor McGregor wrote, “All men are equals, it’s the ones who put in more hard work that are considered talented or special, if you do work hard you will reach the top and that's that”. People who have worked very hard to learn to need and use words effecting include Guy Montag, Frederick Douglass,Malcolm X, and Kurt Vonnegut.

Compare and contrast the representation of the figure of the slave, and of the theme of freedom, in Douglass’s “Narrative” and Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”.

Both authors Frederick Douglass and Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels focus on the topic of freedom. Both authors argue that they are being oppressed. However, this is where the similarities end. Engels and Marx believed that capitalism was a social system used by the proletariats to oppress the bourgeoisie, and that the only way to be free was to fight back against the system. On the other hand, Frederick Douglass focuses more on his individual story and his struggle for freedom, while he tries to appeal to his audience from an ethical point of view.

Slave narratives frequently start with prefaces, written by white editors, which attempt to prepare white readers for the story itself. Such introductions typically affirm to the truthfulness of the story—the accuracy of its facts and the trustworthiness of its black authorship. Since the publishing supervisors position themselves as authorities on the stories, the prefaces indirectly place black stories underneath the power of white editors. Garrison’s prologue in particular displays the urge to control and contain Douglass’s career and narrative. Garrison places himself at the center of the text. Douglass’s success story is replaced somewhat by the story of Garrison’s judgment and fostering of Douglass’s talent. Phillips attests that Douglass’s

It can be said that all fiction is autobiographical in that no matter how different from the author’s life experience it may be, marks of their life can be found in any of their works and characters. One such example is Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, which is largely based on Hemingway’s own personal life experiences. Frederick Henry, the main character in the story, experiences many of the same situations that Hemingway lived out in his own life. Some of events and situations are exact, while others are less similar, and some have a completely different outcome all together.