Finally, pathos is a main appeal of Douglass’ writing. Perhaps the reason why pathos is covered in the whole writing is not difficult for the audience to understand. The fact is that Douglass tells a true story about himself, and his emotions stem from the reality of what he had experienced. Douglass’ pathos is expressed in the way he describes the mistress as a tender-hearted woman in the beginning of the writing. The mistress is also a person who taught him the alphabet. However, she stopped teaching him and hated to see him with a newspaper. Douglass suggests that his mistress turned to violence against him because of oppression that was forced upon her by society and her husband (101). Surely, if Douglass did not have the pathos, he could
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.
In chapter ten, Douglass uses pathos with his imagery and figurative language that provokes an emotional response. Pathos is also seen in his powerful words, phrases and mental images that stir up emotion. Frederick Douglass went from being a slave into being a free man
Douglass uses pathos to describe life as a slave. Page 12 states “ The hearing of those wild notes always depressed my spirit, and filled me with ineffable sadness. I have frequently found myself in tears while hearing them”.” He uses strong words to build an emotional connection to reader describing how the songs of slavery affect him. He uses Logos when he explains the amount of physical pain slaves experience. Page 21 states “ Breaking her nose and breastbone with a stick, so that the poor girl expired in a few hours afterward. “ This is a logical explanation that the overseer Mr. Gore was a cruel and merciless man. Douglass uses Ethos almost throughout the entire book because he establishes credibility when he describes his life as a slave. Page 1 explains “ I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it. “ Slaves were never given their real birth date, so Frederick Douglass never knew his accurate
“Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” is an autobiographical work written by abolitionist orator, and former slave, Frederick Douglass. The book covers the early part of Douglass’s life including his time as a slave, his escape, and what he did shortly after becoming a free man. Douglass’s time as a slave heavily influenced his claim that slavery was a morally unacceptable and disgusting practice that stripped away the humanity of the African Americans that were being taken advantage of. Douglass builds an effective argument around appeals to emotion to demonstrate the horridity of slavery.
1.) Douglass spent so much time talking about the agreed upon points because he was trying to ensure the reader knew that every person, individually, is equal in this world; moreover, that we all should be treated with the same dignity and respect that is declared in the Declaration of Independence. " Are the principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?" (Douglass 316). He does not argue the main points of slavery because it is clear that slavery was wrong and should never occur again.
Another way in which Douglass can be seen to use pathos is through his use of imagery. Douglass describes the actions that white men, mostly slave owners, do to the people of the opposite race. They did not treat these black men with respect: they treated them more like animals than men. They “...beat them with sticks, flay their flesh with the lash, load their limbs with irons, hunt them with dogs, sell them at auction, sunder their families, knock out their teeth, burn their flesh, starve them…” (Douglass). Douglass used pathos effectively in this quote because he was able to show his audience the horrific things that white men did to their black slaves. The word flay has a negative connotation and it’s literal meaning is to whip or beat
As the protagonist, he has a bit more depth and sometimes cannot put his expressions to words. Douglass is angry with the slaveholders' perception of Christianity and the corruption of the entire institution. He was hopeful as a slave while sharing knowledge to others, plotting escape, and starting his new life as a free man. He also appeals to
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.
Frederick Douglass, the author of his biography “Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass”, uses rhetoric in order to persuade his readers towards his ideas. Frederick Douglass uses Ethos in order to convince the author that he knows what he is talking about and how he himself is a credible source for the information he is delivering to thee reader. He uses Pathos to emotionally connect the reader to the text with relatability and through a manipulation of emotions. Lastly Frederick Douglass uses Logos in order to convince the reader and persuade them with factual information.
Douglass’ use of pathos throughout his story helps the reader understand his feelings and connect with him. An example of this is “He gave me a savage kick to the side, and told me to he up. I tried to do so, but fell back in the attempt. He gave me another kick”. Douglass’ uses this example in order to describe to his audience the abuse he endured during this part of his life. Another example of this is “Mr. Covey took up the hickory slat with which Hughes had been striking off the half-bushel measure, and with it gave me a heavy blow upon the head,
The woman's sudden change in feeling towards Douglass shows the reader that the woman's environment really did change how she felt towards another human being. Her husband convinced her that Douglass should never be taught to read and write because they are inferior and it would be dangerous to let "white knowledge" into the hands of a black man.
It is a non-fiction passage; it grabs the audience's attention. At one point in the story, Douglass explained in details how he learned to read and write. One might think this is a major step in Douglass' life. Douglass stated that he found himself Beamon his own life he contemplated taking his own life. This is the gyrate point of the autobiography. The audience would not expect Douglass to feel this way at all. Once Douglass accomplished reading, he found out an abundant amount of information pertaining to slavery and how the whites tortured his people. “In moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Anything, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me. (7.6)" He was appalled by the information he discovered, he realized that he couldn't do anything about it because if anyone was to hear him reading his life would be in grave danger. It was not an easy process for Douglass to be able to read and write. His mistress, Sofia Auld who was said to be kind and tender-hearted, was his biggest supporter she taught him the alphabet. Suddenly, there was a change in her heart. She stopped teaching him and became an avid
Three things a reader will recognize throughout any literary work they read are violent, a Christ figure, and irony. In The Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass, by Frederick Douglass, the reader is embedded in the life of a slave who became free. The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, the reader is riveted to a martyr by the name of John Proctor. Lastly, the reader is administered a dose of irony through all the books and poems, one would read, such as The Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass, by Frederick Douglass, The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, How to Read Literature like a Professor, by Thomas C Foster, and The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost.
Slavery is terrible and hurts slaves and corrupts slave owners. Slaves are whipped until they do what was told or if they don’t finish. Slave owners were good people, but they were corrupted with too much power. In the “Narrative”, Douglass talks about how slavery is bad for slaves and slave owners.
In Frederick Douglass’s narrative, Frederick Douglass struggles to free himself mentally and physically from being a slave, he also struggles with the lack of knowledge surrounding his family and his parents, and he also struggles with the reality of being a slave. Douglass struggles to save money to escape to New York City, in the end; he ends up marrying a free black woman and becomes a speaker for the Anti-Slavery Society.