Frederick Douglass Ethos

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.

It also shows the sense of ownership slaves master’s felt that they had over them. Back then it was common for one man to own another man and to them it was the norm. In today’s society, most would look at owning another human as irrational. Douglass used logos to get the readers on his side. He wanted them to look at the master as a bad person; he wanted the readers to think logically.

In Frederick Douglass’s autobiography, The Narrative of Frederick Douglass, he writes in depth about his life as a slave. His intent for the book is to abolish slavery. He targets the white Northern men by using the three rhetorical appeals: logos, ethos, and pathos, to convince his goal. He also portrays the religious aspect, in Christian values. Narrating his personal experiences with his masters and fellow slaves, he states reasons of the immorality of enslavement. Douglass argues that slavery ultimately dehumanizes slave owners and demonstrates that slavery is immoral.

My first example of diction that Douglass uses is “…in all its glaring odiousness, that slaveholders have ordained, and by law established, that the children of slave women shall in all cases follow the condition of their mothers; and this is done too obviously to administer to their own lusts, and make a gratification of their wicked desires profitable as well…” (2) Here Douglass is describing how slaveholders have sex with the female slaves and abandon the children born from it. He uses words such as odiousness, lust, and wicked desires to show how the slaveholders use and abuse the slaves in their employment for their own gratification. By using the aforementioned words, Douglass try’s to convey to his target audience the audacity of these men who abandon

In chapter seven of the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Douglass is finally aware of his approximate age, and is burdened with the thought of being a “slave for life.” At the age of 12, it is not very encouraging to be given the description of a “slave for life.” Douglass uses his newfound reading and writing skills to cleverly comprehend the book The Columbian Orator, and the speeches from the Catholic emancipation it contains, in his favor. The book Douglass discovers does a good job of supporting his invalidation of slavery as well as providing him with knowledge and reasonable arguments.

“You are loosed from your moorings, and are free; I am fast in my chains, and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly before the bloody whip! You are freedom’s swift-winged angel, and that fly round the word; I am confined in the bands of iron!” He compares himself to the boats. He depicts how the boats are able to move freely whereas he is held in lifelong bondage. It is evident that he also uses parallel sentences with antithesis. He conveys some sense of complexity in himself and a greater insight to his feelings. The exclamatory sentences intensify Douglass’s statements about his feelings as a slave which reinforces the author’s rhetorical

In the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” it shows all 3 rhetorical appeals (Ethos, Pathos, Logos) which are found in all forms of writing, speeches, movies, television shows, and life within itself. Frederick Douglass used all three of these rhetoric in the narrative to tell about both his life as an American slave and his cause over ten decades ago. He uses these devices to identify himself to the readers, to bring emotion out of the readers, and to persuade the readers.

Assertion (specific rhetorical device): Douglass uses pathos with imagery which awakens the readers because they can imagine the awful situation that Douglass was in or had to witness. By imaginnging this, the readers should feel sorrow and hope that this does not happen to anyone else.

experience to persuade the readers that slavery is cold-blooded and cruel. Douglass uses many rhetorical

Frederick Douglass appeals to the senses of logos and pathos in The Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass to convince his audience that people who were a partook slavery in his time period weren’t bad people. He claims that slavery itself is the problem, and no one is safe from its powers of corruption. His appeal to logos leads to his argument being much harder to rebut since he backs it up with real examples from his life, while his appeal to pathos is used to make the argument more personal and provocative since it gives Douglass and his audience some common ground.

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

A slave has all the emotion to want freedom, but no common sense or logic to obtain it, nor the advantages in society to reach it. Mr.Douglass uses all three aspects such as Pathos, Logos, Ethos to not only depict the struggle and blindness of slaves, but present the lifestyle of slave and the missed opportunities in front of the so they can realize the difference between what is suppose represent them(The American Promise) then what they really are(the American Individual). Pathos is used by Douglass to express slaves gratitude, anger, and feelings of their turmoil by putting those around him in his book as examples seeking for their american individual to be realized. Secondly, logos is the logic he speaks when clarifying what slaves are missing out on not taking

Jim Rohn had stated that “Learning is the beginning of wealth. Learning is the beginning of health. Learning is the beginning of spirituality. Searching and learning is where the miracle process all begins.” In the case of slaves, freedom gave access to wealth because it allowed them to own things. Freedom was a source of health because they would not be mistreated anymore, and it was a source of contentment to the slaves because it opened a whole new world where they didn’t have to listen to their masters. Freedom was also a miracle because people rarely have the opportunity to escape since they didn’t have education to aid them. Therefore, the beginning of freedom was education. For instance, Frederick Douglass had experienced the mistreatment, abuse, and limitations of a slave, but he has also felt the wealth, heath, and contentment of being free after he escaped using his knowledge that introduced him to freedom. As a result, Frederick Douglass decided used rhetoric and structure in the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave to explain and prove the connection between freedom and education.

Logos is an argument based on coherence and philosophy. Throughout the novel, Douglass tells many stories of how a slave was treated. “The frequency of this has had the effect to establish among the slaves the maxim, that a still tongue makes a wise head” (Douglass 24). All the slaves, within themselves, knew when they were asked a question he or she would be more fortunate to not say a word in response. It was evident the difference between freedmen and slaves. They were treated in a discrepant way. “I speak this advisedly,- that killing a slave, or any colored person, in Talbot county, Maryland, is not treated as a crime, either by

Frederick Douglass an amazing author, advocator for anti slavery and a leader was once a former slave who was born into it for life. In order for Frederick Douglass to convey an effective argument against slavery he used rhetorical elements like emotion, which made the readers feel a specific way to win them over. Aso he presented himself as an ethical and moral person who had a thirst for knowledge creating a sense of credibility that was bestowed upon him and trust in the reader so a proper argument could be made .This was all done to show people not affiliated with the conditions of slavery how horrendous it is. All this is found in his exquisitely written autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.