Frederick Douglass Analysis

Fredrick Douglass is a great American author. His book the Narrative of the life of Fredrick Douglass makes a compelling and complex argument for the abolition of slavery. One facet of his argument is disproving the idea that slavery is beneficial to the slave. In order to accomplish this Douglass uses a plethora of strategies to persuade his reader. The most poignant method is the vivid descriptions of the brutality of slavery, made all the more powerful by his judicious use of diction, imagery, and specific examples.
The brutality of slavery seems unquestionable today, however in 1840’s it was a matter of debate. Douglass’s use of intense and unflinching imagery confronts his reader with slavery’s intrinsic viciousness. He achieves this

After she was deemed too old to be useful, she was left alone in a desolate and remote cabin, as Douglass’s phrases it, “turning her out to die!”(Douglass 29). Following this exclamation, he describes her wrenched condition; she was alone, without the children and grandchildren she cared so deeply for, too old to care for herself and with no one there to care for her. He believes she must have died; he imagines her death, her suffering, her loneliness, and misery (Douglass 29). Douglass ends his depiction of his grandmother’s fate by remarking that if she lives, “she lives to suffer” (Douglass 29). This specific example, enriched by the potent imagery, makes the myth, that slave owners tended to their slaves when they were no longer useful, shatter in his readers

Douglass mentions countless instances where slaves were murdered in cold blood, or beaten nearly to death with the white perpetrators never being punished. This indifference tinged with contempt for slaves’ lives is summed up with the phrase, it’s “Worth a half cent to kill a N—, and “half-cent to bury one” (Douglass 15). All of these pieces of evidence help to destroy in the reader’s mind the idea that slavery is a benevolent system for the slaves. The imagery catches the readers eye, makes them see it in their mind. It brings the horror of slavery out in gory detail as they read it. The pure visceral images of a woman being beaten among her crying children, a mother and son torn apart, of guiltless flesh being beaten for a sadistic mans pleasure, of an old woman left to die alone, all add to the power of the argument. The diction builds the imagery, packs it with meaning, makes it unforgettable and haunting. The specific examples pile on each other, as a wave of facts, a tidal wave of un-deniability; it crashes on the reader’s head with a tangible force, making them rethink things they believed to be true, to be self-evident, to be righteous. All of these literary devices and more work together in Narrative of the life of Fredrick Douglass to shatter the belief that slavery is beneficial for the slave, that it is in any way is kind, gentle, or