“Words are singularly the most powerful force available to humanity. We can choose to use this force constructively with words of encouragement, or destructively using words of despair,” (Yehuda Berg). The truth in this statement resounds through time; the way one uses words can change the world. This fact was revealed to Frederick Douglas, who utilizes the truth to its full extent. He is able to form a literary work unparalleled in his time, using absolutely incredible words, moving people to believe in his cause. Douglas’s word choice is so powerful that he was able to help move an entire generation to gain a hate for a system that nearly all of an entire nation’s agriculture was based off of. This challenge was accepted by Douglas, and My …show more content…
The reader starts to see that the system of slavery is a cruel one. Douglas uses words such as “violence,” “angry,” and “fury” to make the reader feel the depravity caused by such a terrible system. The reader realizes the anger that the slave system insights in wonderful people such as Mrs. Auld, and acknowledge the dishonesty of such an institution. It takes beautiful people and turns them into terrible vectors for its vile gain. Slavery damages the individual, inasmuch as it insights them with a vicious rage. It causes them to insight this pain in others. Slavery is a self reciprocating wheel of torment and anger. That is what Douglas uses these words to do; make the reader feel the pain and hate slavery causes in an individual. Furthermore, Douglas makes the reader feel the desperate pain that he felt when he was a slave. Using words such as, “wretched,” “tormented,” “distressed,” and “gloomy” to describe his enlightened state in slavery, he forces the reader to feel his pain. Douglas was stuck as a slave seeking enlightenment, which was a terrible position to be in; he was forced to accumulate knowledge in secret. Douglas was then stuck with this knowledge and a want for it in a situation that the could not utilize it. This would truly cause any human rage and hate, damage their soul, scaring them. Douglas’s use of these words cause the reader …show more content…
Douglas is able to take his subject, his enslavement, and apply it to the bigger picture of slavery as a whole. Firstly, Douglas makes the reader hate his enslavement. Using words and phrases such as “cheated,” “deep sorrow,” “taking my liberty,” “evil,” “keep me ignorant,” “abuse,” and “discontent” when describing his enslavement, Douglas causes the reader to hate the system of slavery. All of these words contain negative connotations, helping the reader to arrive at Douglas’s desired opinion about slavery: it is absolutely wretched. The reader identifies with Douglas; they do not want anyone to keep them ignorant, take their liberty, or “abuse” them. These terms are all easy for the reader to view as negative, as the reader would not want them to happen to his or herself. In explaining the negative effects of slavery in terms that the reader understands, the reader finds an easy relation with Douglas. Douglas makes the reader see slavery as something that the reader hates not want by forcing him or her into his shoes. He shares this negative experience of his slavery, giving the reader cause to join him in his hate of it. Moreover, Douglas’s vile description of his experience with slavery was so strong that it leaves a lasting impression on the reader’s opinion of slavery, inasmuch as just the word itself insights disgust. This accomplishes creating Douglas’s desired theme of an
During the era of slavery in America, it was common to see slaves being content with their given social ascription of identity. Many had accepted their fate of forever being bound. Madison Washington, the main character in Frederick Douglass’ novel, The Heroic Slave; however, couldn’t come to terms with being denied the inalienable right of being free. This book focuses on Washington and his journey in pursuit of liberty. He does whatever he can to be free from the bonds of slavery, and is fueled by the knowledge that slavery cannot be right or justified.
Douglass's Narrative brings an ugly era of American history to life as it weaves through his personal experiences with slavery, brutality, and escape. Most importantly Douglass reveals the real problem in slavery, which is the destructive nature of intolerance and the need for change. Douglass refers many times to the dehumanizing effects sla...
Slavery consisted of numerous inhumane horrors completed to make its victims feel desolated and helpless. Many inescapable of these horrors of slavery are conveyed in the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”. The entire prospect of the duration of the story is to plan an escape from the excruciating conditions awaiting Douglass as a slave. When his escape is finally executed, unpredictable emotions and thoughts overwhelm him. Within the conclusion of his narrative (shown in the given passage), Frederick Douglass uses figurative language, diction, and syntax to portray such states of mind he felt after escaping slavery: relief, loneliness, and paranoia.
Frederick Douglass defined his manhood through his education and his freedom. As a slave he realized "the white man's power to enslave the black man".*(Narrative 273) That power was through mental and physical enslavement. Douglass knew that becoming literate would be "the pathway from slavery to freedom".*(275) His education would give him the mental freedom to then gain physical freedom. He became literate by bribing and befriending the neighborhood boys that lived around him. Every chance Douglass had, he would find another way to gain more knowledge to learn to read.
Fredrick Douglas is a well known figure in the abolishment movement through his narrative “Learning to Read and Write,” Douglas shares his own personal journey of how he learns to read and write. His organization helps the reader get a better grasp of the stages in his life; his innocence, his epiphany, his loathing and finally his determination. Through the use of syntax and diction, metaphors and the use of irony, he portrays the thoughts that went through his mind as a slave.
These three pieces of literature were written around the time of the Civil war, which was a war fought between the Northern States and the Southern States in America. While the main topic of the Civil War was slavery, that was not the only reason for the hostility. These pieces were written about slavery, all with a completely different perspective. From My Bondage and My Freedom was written by Frederick Douglass. He was an actual slave who learned to read and write, and he wrote this book about his journey as a slave and the hardships he endured. Douglass says in his book that “One cannot easily forget to love freedom…” (345) which displays the feelings that he had toward his slavery. From Uncle Tom’s Cabin was written by Harriet Beecher Stowe,
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.
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).
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
America in the mid to early nineteenth century saw the torture of many African Americans in slavery. Plantation owners did not care whether they were young or old, girl or boy, to them all slaves were there to work. One slave in particular, Frederick Douglass, documented his journey through slavery in his autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Through the use of various rhetorical devices and strategies, Douglass conveys the dehumanizing and corrupting effect of slavery, in order to show the overall need for American abolition. His use of devices such as parallelism, asyndeton, simile, antithesis, juxtaposition and use of irony, not only establish ethos but also show the negative effects of slavery on slaves, masters and
In Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, one of the major themes is how the institution of slavery has an effect on the moral health of the slaveholder. The power slaveholders have over their slaves is great, as well as corrupting. Douglass uses this theme to point out that the institution of slavery is bad for everyone involved, not just the slaves. Throughout the narrative, Douglass uses several of his former slaveholders as examples. Sophia Auld, once such a kind and caring woman, is transformed into a cruel and oppressive slave owner over the course of the narrative. Thomas Auld, also. Douglass ties this theme back to the main concern of authorial control. Although this is a personal account, it is also a tool of propaganda, and is used as such. Douglass’s intent is to convince readers that the system of slavery is horrible and damaging to all included, and thus should be abolished completely. Douglass makes it very clear in his examples how exactly the transformation occurs and how kind and moral people can become those who beat their slaves and pervert Christianity in an attempt to justify it.
...e proper descriptions of Douglass’s experiences. These words also justify that he is brilliant and not no fool. His influential words in the narrative support the message of him being smarter than what some people may believe.
In the Autobiography, “Narrative Life of Fredrick Douglas: An American Slave,” Fredrick Douglas writes to show what the life of a slave is like, because from personal experience, he knows. Fredrick Douglas not only shows how his life has been as a slave but shows what it is like to be on the bottom and be mistreated. Douglas shows that freedom isn’t free, and he took the initiative to become a free man. Not many African-Americans had the opportunity to make themselves free and were forced to live a life of disparity and torture. Through his experience Douglas shows us the psychological effects of slavery. Through Douglas’s memory we are able to relive the moments that continued to haunt his life. Douglas’s book showed the true
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.
While writing about the dehumanizing nature of slavery, Douglass eloquently and efficiently re-humanize African Americans. This is most evident throughout the work as a whole, yet specific parts can be used as examples of his artistic control of the English language. From the beginning of the novel, Douglass’ vocabulary is noteworthy with his use of words such as “intimation […] odiousness […] ordained.” This more advanced vocabulary is scattered throughout the narrative, and is a testament to Douglass’ education level. In conjunction with his vocabulary, Douglass often employed a complex syntax which shows his ability to manipulate the English language. This can be seen in Douglass’ self-description of preferring to be “true to [himself], even at the hazard of incurring ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and incur [his] own abhorrence.” This is significant because it proves that Douglass can not only simply read and write, but he has actually obtained a mastery of reading and writing. This is a highly humanizing trait because it equates him in education level to that of the stereotypical white man, and how could one deny that the white man is human because of his greater education? It is primarily the difference in education that separates the free from the slaves, and Douglass is able to bridge this gap as a pioneer of the