Frederick Douglass Figurative Language

860 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Analysis of the narrative of the life of frederick douglass

In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, a slave narrative published in 1845, Frederick Douglass divulged his past as a slave and presented a multifaceted argument against slavery in the United States. Douglass built his argument with endless anecdotes and colorful figurative language. Additionally, he attempted to familiarize the naïve northerners with the hardships of slavery and negate any misconstrued ideas that would prolong slavery’s existence in American homes. Particularly in chapter seven, Douglass both narrated his personal experience of learning to write and identified the benefits and consequences of being an educated slave. In the middle of chapter seven, Douglass portrayed his adolescent self as a resourceful boy with a …show more content…

Auld, no longer supported furthering his education and for this, Douglass had to sneak around in order to become literate. At that time, little, hungry, white boys on the streets of Baltimore served as his main source of education. Douglass would carry bread with him when he ran errands for the Aulds and when he encountered possible teachers, he would “bestow [the bread] upon the hungry little urchins, who, in return, would give [him] that more valuable bread of knowledge” (53). The author used this clever pun to emphasize that literacy for an uneducated slave was as important as food was for a hungry child if he wanted to be free. Douglass’ acknowledgment of the importance of being literate later plays into his suggestion that slave owners purposely keep their slaves ignorant in order to keep them from leaving the plantation. In addition to Douglass’ use of figurative language in this section, he …show more content…

By age twelve, Douglass had read the Columbian Orator, a dialogue between a slave and his master. In the dialogue, the slave thoroughly supported his grievances of his enslavement and for this, freedom was awarded to him. The documents in the novel gave Douglass not only the hope to one day become free, but a political argument to back up his personal feelings against slavery. Douglass attempted to explain the influential value of the information that he found within the Colombian Orator when he expressed that “[the documents] gave tongue to interesting thoughts of [his] soul which had frequently flashed through [his] own mind, and died away for want of utterance” (54). Without the ability to read, Douglass could not have identified a logical argument against slavery and could not have expressed this information to the ignorant people of the north. Although the benefits of comprehension were initially sweet, the consequences of realization were harder to endure. Douglass barely conveyed the degree of confinement which he felt when he understood the situation he was in and for this, he declared “I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own” (54). Douglass continued to explain that he knew what he needed to do in order to gain his freedom, but did not understand how he could achieve it on his own. The unfortunate

Show More
Related

  • Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass Syntax Analysis

    310 Words  | 1 Pages

    Frederick Douglass, an African American social reformer who escaped from slavery, in his autobiography “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself,” denotes the perilous life of a slave in the South. Through syntax, Douglass is able to persuade his readers to support the abolitionist movement as his writing transitions from shifting sentence lengths to parallel structure and finally to varying uses of punctuation. Douglass begins his memoir with a combination of long and short sentences that serve to effectively depict life his life as a slave. This depiction is significant because it illustrates the treatment of slaves in the south allows his audience to despise the horrors of slavery. In addition, this

    Read More

  • Frederick Douglass: Escaping Slavery through Literacy

    711 Words  | 2 Pages

    Douglass was motivated to learn how to read by hearing his master condemn the education of slaves. Mr. Auld declared that an education would “spoil” him and “forever unfit him to be a slave” (2054). He believed that the ability to read makes a slave “unmanageable” and “discontented” (2054). Douglass discovered that the “white man’s power to enslave the black man” (2054) was in his literacy and education. As long as the slaves are ignorant, they would be resigned to their fate. However, if the slaves are educated, they would understand that they are as fully human as the white men and realize the unfairness of their treatment. Education is like a forbidden fruit to the slave; therefore, the slave owners guard against this knowledge of good and evil. Nevertheless, D...

    Read More

  • Frederick Douglass' Words Caught the Attention of Many - Including Slave Owners

    867 Words  | 2 Pages

    Literature is written in many ways and styles. During his time, Frederick Douglass’s works and speeches attracted many people’s attention. With the amount of works and speeches Douglass has given, it has influenced many others writers to express themselves more freely. Though Douglass lived a rigorous childhood, he still made it the best that he could, with the guidance and teaching of one of his slave owner’s wife he was able to read and write, thus allowing him to share his life stories and experiences. Douglass’s work today still remain of great impact and influence, allowing us to understand the reality of slavery, and thus inspiring many others to come out and share for others to understand.

    Read More

  • The Use of Trickery:, A Theme in the Novel: The Life of Frederick Douglass

    752 Words  | 2 Pages

    Douglass employs the use of anecdotes to clarify why he would deceive others. After Mrs. Auld’s transformation, Douglass resorts to “various stratagems” (22) to learn to read and write. In some sense, Douglass recruits the “poor white children… [or] hungry little urchins” (23), who do not yet know the rift between the two skin pigments, to learn to read. Douglass trades them “bread … enough of which was always in the house” (23) while the boys teach Douglass what they have learned in school, the “more valuable bread of knowledge” (23). Douglass tricks the boys into giving him reading lessons, trading the object they most desire, food, with the object Douglass most desires, knowledge. The basic need for food allows Douglass to use their knowledge to his advantage in furthering his understanding. Douglass, however, could not just stop at reading; he also desires to write. To learn to write, Douglass uses other boys who he knew could write. With this strategy, though, Douglass fibs to the boys. It is a common understanding that humans strive for superiority over each other, which Douglass uses to his benefit. The boys naturally want to have a higher intelligence than Douglass, thus when Douglass states he is e...

    Read More

  • Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

    915 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: The Formation of Identity

    2136 Words  | 5 Pages

    The reader is first introduced to the idea of Douglass’s formation of identity outside the constraints of slavery before he or she even begins reading the narrative. By viewing the title page and reading the words “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, written by himself” the reader sees the advancement Douglass made from a dependent slave to an independent author (Stone 134). As a slave, he was forbidden a voice with which he might speak out against slavery. Furthermore, the traditional roles of slavery would have had him uneducated—unable to read and incapable of writing. However, by examining the full meaning of the title page, the reader is introduced to Douglass’s refusal to adhere to the slave role of uneducated and voiceless. Thus, even before reading the work, the reader knows that Douglass will show “how a slave was made a man” through “speaking out—the symbolic act of self-definition” (Stone 135).

    Read More

  • Deborah E. McDowell “In the First Place: Making Frederick Douglass and the Afro-American Narrative Tradition”

    556 Words  | 2 Pages

    As both the narrator and author of “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, Written by Himself” Frederick Douglass writes about his transition from a slave to a well educated and empowered colored young man. As a skilled and spirited man, he served as both an orator and writer for the abolitionist movement, which was a movement to the abolishment of slavery. At the time of his narrative’s publication, Douglass’s sole goal of his writings was to essentially prove to those in disbelief that an articulate and intelligent man, such as himself, could have,in fact, been enslaved at one point in time. While, Douglass’ narrative was and arguably still is very influential, there are some controversial aspects of of this piece, of which Deborah McDowell mentions in her criticism.

    Read More

  • Frederick Douglass Figurative Language Analysis

    618 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, a slave narrative published in 1845, Frederick Douglass divulged his past as a slave and presented a multifaceted argument against slavery in the United States. Douglass built his argument with endless anecdotes and colorful figurative language. He attempted to familiarize the naïve Northerners with the hardships of slavery and negate any misconstrued ideas that would prolong slavery’s existence in American homes. Particularly in chapter seven, Douglass both narrated his personal experience of learning to write and identified the benefits and consequences of being an educated slave.

    Read More

  • Frederick Douglass Injustice Essay

    1081 Words  | 3 Pages

    He had long fought to learn to read and was so excited and eager to do so, he never expected the circumstances of this to be as dehumanizing as they were. He regretted learning to read because it brought him nothing but desperation, he learned his awful truth and that of his fellow slaves. "It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy." (Douglass, 24) The truth was that the more he learned the more he became aggravated, he knew there was not much he could do. It brought his moral down along with many other feelings, even a slave like Frederick had learned the awful feeling of

    Read More

  • Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass Ethos Essay

    616 Words  | 2 Pages

    In, “The Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass”, readers get a first person perspective on slavery in the South before the Civil War. The author, Frederick Douglass, taught himself how to read and write, and was able to share his story to show the evils of slavery, not only in regard to the slaves, but with regard to masters, as well. Throughout Douglass’ autobiography, he shares his disgust with how slavery would corrupt people and change their whole entire persona. He uses ethos, logos, and pathos to help establish his credibility, and enlighten his readers about what changes needed to be made.

    Read More

  • Learning To Read And Write By Frederick Douglass Analysis

    779 Words  | 2 Pages

    Without being educated, slavers endure dehumanization and the control of their slaveholders. As a result, Douglass is motivated to get literate with ingenious strategies. He constantly bribes the “little white boys” and the “poor white children” who live closely with him to teach him reading with extra bread (Douglass 62). His writing lessons are from the boys who can compete with him in writing letters, Master Thomas’s book, and ship-yard. Along with his reading’s improvement, he comprehends the injustice between slaves and slaveholders from the books. A book “The Columbian Orator”, which provokes him the critical thinking about slavery and freedom. Through reading the Sheridan’s speeches that are from the same book, he claims, “[w]hat I got from Sheridan was a bold denunciation of slavery, and a powerful vindication of human rights” (Douglass 62). Sometimes he listens the discussion of abolition even though he does not really understands it. Until he gets a city paper that allows him to pray for “the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia” (Douglass 63), he understands the meaning of abolition. Being literate helps him understand the extensive knowledge, which is ready for

    Read More

  • Key Arguments in "The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass"

    1143 Words  | 3 Pages

    In sum, all of these key arguments exist in “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” because of the institution of slavery and its resulting lack of freedom that was used to defend it. This text’s arguments could all be gathered together under the common element of inequality and how it affected the practical, social, and even spiritual lives of the slaves.

    Read More

  • Essay on Literacy in African-American Literature

    2285 Words  | 5 Pages

    As a relatively young man, Frederick Douglass discovers, in his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, that learning to read and write can be his path to freedom. Upon discovering that...

    Read More

  • Analysis of The Narrative of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass

    902 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Narrative of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass is written to have people place their feet in the shoes of Frederick Douglass and try to understand the experience he went through as a slave. Douglass writes this piece of literature with strong wording to get his point across. He is not trying to point out the unpleasant parts of history, but to make people face the truth. He wants readers to realize that slavery is brutalizing and dehumanizing, that a slave is able to become a man, and that some slaves, like himself, have intellectual ability. These points are commonly presented through the words of Douglass because of his diction.

    Read More

  • Slavery’s Dehumanizing Effects on American Slaves and Slaveholders

    1652 Words  | 4 Pages

    Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, brings to light many of the social injustices that colored men, women, and children all were forced to endure throughout the nineteenth century under Southern slavery laws. Douglass's life-story is presented in a way that creates a compelling argument against the justification of slavery. His argument is reinforced though a variety of anecdotes, many of which detailed strikingly bloody, horrific scenes and inhumane cruelty on the part of the slaveholders. Yet, while Douglas’s narrative describes in vivid detail his experiences of life as a slave, what Douglass intends for his readers to grasp after reading his narrative is something much more profound. Aside from all the physical burdens of slavery that he faced on a daily basis, it was the psychological effects that caused him the greatest amount of detriment during his twenty-year enslavement. In the same regard, Douglass is able to profess that it was not only the slaves who incurred the damaging effects of slavery, but also the slaveholders. Slavery, in essence, is a destructive force that collectively corrupts the minds of slaveholders and weakens slaves’ intellects.

    Read More

More about Frederick Douglass Figurative Language

Open Document