Born in the south in 1818, Frederick Douglass was destined to life as a slave. As a young child, Douglass had to witness brutal mistreatment of fellow slaves, and even endure the punishment himself as he got older. Despite the obstacle of slavery in his life, he managed to escape his fate and travel to the north. There, he was able to attain in education in the field of literacy and language. Despite his escape to the north, slavery still engulfed the nation, a fact Douglass wanted to bring attention to and change. Thus, in 1845 using his newfound education of literacy powers, he turned his tortured memories of being a slave into a book, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. The title itself was an explanation of the book, as he …show more content…
In describing his newfound freedom in the north towards the end of the book, he recalls his hatred towards his past owners. He practically name-calls them, describing them as, "...money loving kidnappers..." and, "...hungry lions..." (Pg. 136). His use of strong diction towards his owners portray his anger still seated in him. The aggressive language is used to characterize to the readers how heartless and monstrous the slaveholders were, as he believed they wanted to rip apart families with selfish intent. It is obvious Douglass feels a burning sensation of hatred towards his past owners due to the harsh mistreatment of him. By using diction, he is able to project his emotions onto the readers, and inform them of the people who are driven by greed, of the people he called …show more content…
He described his kind treatment of his mistress after suffering a brutal beating from white men. He explains the emotions and actions of his mistress, as she, "...again melted into pity. My puffed out eye and blood-covered face moved her to tears. She took the chair by me, washed the blood from my face, and, with the mothers tenderness, bound up my head, covering the wounded eye with a lean piece of fresh beef" (Pg. 122). His description of the beating is used to show readers the gross mistreatment he had to forgo due to the color of his skin. The beating wasn 't doled out by his master, but instead by other white men who had no regards to his life. Douglass includes this excerpt to not only bring attention to the abuse of slave owners, but also the abuse slaves had to endure by white men. By bringing attention to the abuse he had to suffer, Douglass highlights to the readers the injustice of slavery, and how it changed the moralities of those not even holding a slave. Douglass includes this description to intend to show readers why there needed to be an end to slavery- to save the moralities of those who had not yet been plagued by the institution of
Douglass uses irony to bring a point across to his audience, with the recounting of his own heritage. He explains that his separation after birth from his mother, a slave, and a majority of his foul treatment is likely because his white father feels a need to destroy the lives of his bastard children in order to reassert devotion to
Frederick Douglass was born into the institution of slavery in 1817, in Tuckahoe, Maryland. Frederick Douglass did not know the exact date of his birth so he adopted February 14th, because his mother used to call him her "little valentine." Douglass knew very little about his mother since she was a field hand on the plantation some twelve miles away, and tragically she died when he was a very young boy. Douglass did not know who his father was, but it was rumored he was the son of his white slave master, Aaron Anthony.
What is it like to be a slave? In the passage from the novel The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Douglass uses language to convey to the readers the difficulties of being a slave and how incomparable it is to any other life experience. Douglass’ experience of being a slave and then successfully escaping is an adventure that is impossible to relate to. Douglass uses language choice (sentence structure), imagery, metaphor, and punctuation to express the struggles of being an escaped slave.
In Douglass’ book, he narrates his earliest accounts of being a slave. At a young age, he acknowledges that it was a masters’ prerequisite to “keep their slaves thus ignorant”, reporting he had no true account of his age, and was groomed to believe, “a want of information concerning my own was a source of unhappiness to me even during childhood” (25). This mindset was inbreeded in slaves to use ignorance as control and power. As a child, Douglass is separated from his mother. Thus, he comprehends this is implemented in slavery to disengage any mental, physical, and emotional bond within families and to benefit slave owners concern of uprooting slaves for trade. He illustrates the “norm” action and response of a slave to the master. To describe the typical dialogue, he states, “To all these complaints, no matter how unjust, the slave must answer never a word”, and in response “a slave must stand, listen, and tremble” (38). In the course of his narrative, he describes several excruciating acts of abuse on slaves. His first memory of this exploitation, the lashing of his Aunt Hester, he depicts as, “the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery” (29). Also, he gives accounts of owners’ self-deception tactics, injustices, and in effect, shaping characteristics of prejudice, jealousy, and dishonesty of slaves towards slaves. Likewise, connecting to the reader, slave...
The book Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass can be interpreted in many ways. It is an autobiography that details Douglass’s experiences while he was enslaved. However, it is evident that he has been forced to censor the content of his narrative. Douglass mentions more than once that he is not able to say everything he desires. Moreover, on the surface the book is about the harshness of his life as a slave, but on a deeper level Douglass uses irony to give a compelling criticism of the institution of slavery. In his account he gives sarcastic descriptions of the privileges the slaves receive and what it looks like for slaves to be treated well. Nevertheless, both techniques of writing are effective
In a preface of Douglass' autobiography, William Lloyd Garrison writes, "I am confident that it is essentially true in all its statements; that nothing has been set down in malice, nothing exaggerated, nothing drawn from the imagination; that it comes short of the reality, rather than overstates a single fact in regard to SLAVERY AS IT IS."(Garrison, 34). The significance of this statement validates and promises that Douglass' words are nothing but the truth. This made the narrative more marketable to the white audience and people were listening. Douglass realized that he did not need assurance from white people to be respected. That's why he addressed his master for all the wrong things done to him. Slaves are looked as not human. Douglass completes his journey from slave to man when he creates his own identity. He speaks out, fighting as an abolitionist and finally becoming an author. Douglass tells his story not simply as a search for fr...
...streated and punished their slaves, and how they used religion as an excuse to legitimize their immoral actions. “Slavery was a most painful situation; and, to understand it, one must experience it, or imagine himself in similar circumstances … then, and not till then, will he fully appreciate the hardships of, and know how to sympathize with, the toil worn and whipped-scarred … slave” (64). Douglass’s own words are meant as a plea for his readers to imagine themselves in his situation he and other slaves endured to better understand the hardships he and other slaves endured (Quarles xi).
The vivid feeling of relief and elation as a result of escaping the clutches of slavery is evident from the analogies and figurative language Douglass uses in the beginning of the passage. Douglass states he struggled to express exactly what significance freedom in the North had on his immediate mental state. However, he manages to use words such as “highest excitement” to present the level of relief he acquired from escaping, giving a connotation of obvious unlimited happiness. He further described such a dynamic feeling to his audience by comparing it to the feeling an “ . . . unarmed mariner [receives] when is rescued by a friendly man-of-war from the pursuit of a pirate.” This analogy not only helps the progression of the description of this relief but it also gives the audience imagery to connect the feeling to. He continued by including a line he previously used in letter to a friend living in New York of feeling as though he escaped “a den of hungry lions”. By including the words “hungry lions” one can see that he is referring to the South, full of slave masters ...
In this narrative, Douglass, after very many obstacles are conquered, eventually overcomes the ultimate hardship of all time; slavery. At the time this narrative was written (1845), slavery was a common practice in the south, and it was nearly unheard of to escape its grueling jaws. One of Douglass’s first memories was seeing his aunt being tied up and beaten until the warmth of her own blood dripping down her back became pools of dried up blood at her feet. The screams he heard that day were unforgettable, and forever branded in his ears. This eventually led to his own beatings, in the same manner. At an early age, Douglass realized that he could no longer live this way, and decided to do something about it. His perseverance came in baby steps: first learning to read, next to acquire allies, and finally to make his move and never look back. If Douglass were to forget his end goal in any of this chaos, it is likely that he would have became swallowed up in adversity and let it consume him until he had completely lost his will to escape, or even live. However, keeping his end goal in mind, he was brilliant with his delicate moves to escape the sink hole that is
Douglass appeals to pathos in his narrative through many quotes and traumatic events that he experienced. He states, “I was afraid to speak to anyone for fear of speaking to the wrong one, and thereby falling into the hands of money-loving kidnappers, whose business it was to lie in wait for their prey” (Douglass 113). By creating such an analogy, Douglass provokes guilty and sympathetic emotion from his readers. He’s saying that he doesn’t even know who he can and cannot trust, because slavery changes everyone’s personas and
Douglass then goes on to describe how slavery and his mistress husband’s beliefs alter her demeanor, for example, he writes about her “tender heart became stone, and the lamblike disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness.” He
Frederick Douglass was brought from Africa as a baby to the U.S. to become a slave during the 17th century. In his narrative book “Narrative of The Life of Frederick Douglass,” he used rhetoric to provoke reader’s emotions, and inspiration of hope when everything isn’t good. Douglass used the rhetoric appeal pathos to show people how horrible he was treated as a slave, and how he kept up his motivation about becoming free from slavery. In addition, he also used pathos so effective that readers can see his experiences in front of themselves.
Many of his vivid descriptions of how the slaves were treated and talked are clearly aimed to hit a soft spot. Mr. Alud called Douglass awful names and spoke of him like he was property. “Now,” said he, “if you teach that nigger (speaking of myself) how to read, there would be no keeping him” (Douglass page 30). If a slave got lucky there new mistress would be nice but more times than not she was mean. Another story about Douglass’ life that he put in the book to make the reader’s sympathies, was the cruel mistress Mrs. Hamilton. “The girls seldom passed her without her saying, “Move faster, you black gip!” at the same time giving them a blow with the cowskin over the head or shoulders, often drawing the blood”(Douglass 31). Many things in Douglass’ narrative supported pathos and how it appealed to the
In this narrative, Douglass describes his life as a slave in ways that is brutalizing and dehumanizing. He wants his readers to understand that concept. By doing this, Douglass writes, “I was seized with a violent aching of the head, attended with extreme dizziness; I trembled in every limb” (416). Douglass uses diction such as seized, aching, extreme dizziness, and trembled to help create a picture of the pain he had felt during his experiences of being a slave for Mr. Covey. Another example is when he writes, “I told him as well as I could, for I scarce had strength to speak. He then gave me a savage kick in the side, and told me to get up I tried to do so, but fell back in the attempt. He gave me another kick, and again told me to rise. I again tried, and succeeded in gaining my feet; but stooping to get the tub with which I was feeding the fan, I again staggered and fell” (416-17). Words like scarce, savage, and staggered place imagery into the reader’s minds of what he went through as a slave. One other way that Douglass shows how his words emphasize the message is when he writes, “The blood was yet oozing from the wound on my head. For a time I thought I should bleed to death; and think now that I should have done so, but that the blood so matted my hair as to stop the w...
When first introduced to Douglass and his story, we find him to be a young slave boy filled with information about those around him. Not only does he speak from the view point of an observer, but he speaks of many typical stereotypes in the slave life. At this point in his life, Frederick is inexperienced and knows nothing of the pleasures of things such as reading, writing, or even the rights everyone should be entitled to. Douglass knowing hardly anything of his family, their whereabouts, or his background, seems to be equivalent to the many other slaves at the time. As a child Frederick Douglass sees the injustices around him and observes them, yet as the story continues we begin to see a change.