Narrative And Life Of Frederick Douglass Rhetorical Analysis

For hundreds of years, slaves in America were separated from their families to be sold off like livestock to their slave owners, then forced to work and live in unimaginable conditions, and viciously beaten for something as little as a task not fully being met. In the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, written by the self-taught, abolitionist himself, Douglass shares some light on the inhumane treatment and hardships slaves were forced to overcome in his journey to free himself both mentally and physically from slavery. Douglass appeals to ethos, pathos, and logos in order to truly open his reader's eyes to the horrors of slavery, conveying his message that slavery must be abolished.

     By centering on his own personal story, Douglass is able to capture the attention of his audience. With a more detailed description of events taking place, the reader is trapped into that time period, being able to live out the experience with Douglass. Frederick Douglass’ quest for freedom almost becomes a quest for the reader as well. The tone set during this section of the narrative shows Douglass to be much more in charge than he was as a child. A confident slave, Douglass anticipates his freedom, yet also creating a freedom for himself while still enslaved.

Slavery is a topic very capable of putting an emotional weight on a person. This is even more so for those that have actually experienced it first-hand. Frederick Douglass, one of the more influential African-Americans in history, himself, was once a slave. He experienced everything that comes with being a slave in first-person. All the wickedness, hardships, and mental and physical damage, that came with being a slave, were experienced by him. Frederick is able to experience freedom after taking the step himself and escaping slavery. After what is almost an entire life of slavery, one would expect him to have many thoughts floating in his mind about his new found freedom. In the passage from the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Douglass use figures of speech and syntax, and repetition of key phrases to convey his feelings of excitement, insecurity, and loneliness from escaping slavery and arriving in New York in 1838.

During the mid-19th century, the issue of slavery divided the nation between two firmly rooted camps, the southern slave owners and the northern abolitionists. As authors and activists attempted to shed light on the issue of slavery, they appealed to the millions of citizens who were in between camps, whether due to a lack of knowledge or lack of importance in their daily lives. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is one such literary work that helped inform American citizens on the horrors of slavery, offering a first-hand account as Douglass rose from a slave to an educated free man. Within his narrative, Douglass describes his life as a slave and transition into American society with newfound freedom, highlighting the dehumanizing results of slavery. Furthermore, Douglass appeals to the three Aristotelian appeals throughout his novel, synthesizing the argument that slavery should be abolished. Specifically, Douglass makes use of vivid imagery that appeals to readers’ pathos, inciting horror in his audience at the sight of atrocities committed by slave owners. Moreover, Douglass references a number of prominent literary works when forming analogies between slavery and history, appealing to readers’ ethos by illustrating his education and increasing the credibility of his argument. Finally, Douglass utilizes a parallel sentence structure to appeal to readers’ logos by presenting his

After about nine chapters detailing his slave life, he says, “You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.” (Douglass, 75) He then goes on to describe the turning point for him that sparked his quest for freedom. By structuring his narrative this way, he reveals both sides- how slavery broke him “in body, soul, and spirit” (Douglass, 73) and how it eventually “rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom” within him (Douglass, 80). In doing so, he gives the reader an insight into how he became himself, and reinforces the evils of slavery in the way it shapes a man’s life. Douglass’ use of diction and structure effectively persuades the reader of the barbarity and inhumanity that comes as a result of slavery.

The “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” is an autobiography in which Frederick Douglass reflects on his life as a slave in America. He writes this book as a free slave, in the North, while slavery was still running its course before the Civil War. Through his effective use of rhetorical strategies, Frederick Douglass argues against the institution of slavery by appealing to pathos and ethos, introducing multiple anecdotes, using satirical irony, and explaining the persuasive effects of slavery and reasoning behind keeping slaves uneducated.

This shows the reader clearly that when a slave is freed they feel as if they can start a whole new and great life with no worries at all. But what Douglass soon realizes is that the idea of freedom couldn’t be more different than the real thing. “Where he is every moment subjected to the terrible liability of being seized upon by his fellow-men, as the hideous crocodile seizes upon his prey!” In this sentence, Douglass really shows the reader how he views his life of freedom. He compares other people, specifically white people, to crocodiles and how they seize their prey to the way white people could turn on him at any second. The imagery Douglass infuses in with the metaphors further conveys how he feels toward freedom and slavery. “…as the ferocious beasts of the forest lie in wait for their prey.” The term ferocious beasts puts an image of unfriendly, scary faces all watching Douglass, waiting for him to crack to do something wrong that would lead him back to a life of slavery.

In this passage from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, the third paragraph is distinguished from the rest because of the language and syntax used. This distinction contributes to Douglass’ rhetorical purpose of the passage, which is to show that a slave’s ambition cannot be extinguished for very long. In the first paragraph, Douglass talks about how Mr. Covey made him “broken in body, soul, and spirit.” However, through his writing in the third paragraph, Douglass shows how that wasn’t the case for long, as he details his hopes and plans for freedom.

Douglass also declares in his apostrophe,”’You are freedom’s swift-winged angels, that fly round the world; I am confined in bands of iron!’”(56). This figurative language shows how slaves were in no ways free. By being confined, figuratively and literally, in “chains”, Douglass affirms that by being a slave, his freedom is taken. He has no rights to own anything, and is considered property. Douglass is able to successfully portray the hell of being a slave to his readers from the north and south, giving them incentive to join the abolitionist movement.

Firstly, the literary devices Frederick Douglass uses to convey the point of slavery as an evil is imagery. In The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass we see three major uses of imagery. The autobiography contains similes, metaphors, and personification of the things around him. A simile that we see in the autobiography is, “I looked like a man who had escaped a den of wild beasts and had barely escaped them” (Douglass, 41). At this point during his autobiography he is discussing to his master that he fears Mr. Covey will kill him, and he is begging for his master to take him away from Mr. Covey. Mr. Douglass uses a simile to emphasize the severity of his slavery. To describe himself as a man who has only barely escaped death shows the severity of infliction in slavery. To continue to express his discontentment with slavery he personifies it by saying, “On the one hand, there stood slavery, a stern reality, glaring frightfully upon us, - its

How would you react if you were being enslaved due to the color of your skin? I expect that you would want to do everything you could to change the way the world was thinking. In the Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass written by himself, Douglass is encountered with numbers of different challenges. He has to adjust to the way he is forced to live, educate himself, and reach his goal of making an escape. Overall, he wanted to expose the evils that followed slavery. Douglass appeals to ethos, logos, and pathos in an attempt to end slavery.

The eloquence that he possesses is what convinces people like William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips to see the error of slavery and fight for its abolition. When Douglass reads the speech, he receives, "(...) a bold denunciation of slavery, and a powerful vindication of human rights." (24). This newly learned message empowers Douglass to fight for his right to freedom.

In order to do so, he looks to convince his audience that slavery is an institution that impacts both the slaves and the slaveholders. His emotional tone, driven by logic and straightforwardness, highlight the many ethical dilemmas he faces in his life. From being labeled as a “slave for life” to learning to read and to the many traumatic incidents he experiences, Douglass skillfully uses ethos, pathos, and logos to bring out the emotion of his readers and convince of the evils of slavery. He writes, “I was broken in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me, and behold a man transformed into a brute” (Douglass, Chapter 10). His powerful and descriptive language in this statement essentially puts the reader in his shoes and provokes an emotional response. One moment he was optimistic and suddenly he was crushed by the reality that he woke up to everyday.

Freedom has been a battleground fought over for centuries by groups seeking their acceptance into society. Frederick Douglass, an American slave during the 1800s, is one of the first slaves to seek his freedom during this time and goes on to explain how within his novel The Narrative of Frederick Douglass. The idea of freedom, in Douglass’s eyes, changes drastically throughout his story as a slave. He first makes the connection of inequality as a young boy which sets into action a course of events for Douglass to discover what freedom truly is. Throughout Douglass’s slave life, freedom is there to usher him to the right path, ultimately showing that freedom meant to have the ability to think freely, to possess an education, and above all to be human; for a slave to be viewed in the same way whites viewed themselves.

Question 1a- Mrs. Auld initially believes Douglass’ ability to read was influential on his life. She approved of this gift and continued to teach him despite what others, including her husband, think. The author wrote, “Mrs. Auld-my mistress- was, as I have said, a most kind and tenderhearted woman; and, in the humanity of her heart, and the simplicity of her mind, she set out when I first went to live with her, to treat me as she supposed one human being ought to treat another,” (Douglass 522). This shows the Mrs. Auld wanted to teach young Douglass and treated him as she wished to be treated. Mrs. Auld believed Frederick Douglass was deprived of an education and she was going to teach him to the best of her ability because all people should have the right to proper schooling.