Rhetorical Analysis On Barrows

1823 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Racial discrimination in America today

America has come a long way from the time of slavery, after the Civil war when slavery was abolished the southern Negro was having difficulty fitting in the normal “white” lifestyle. Passionate, expectant, and placid author Samuel J. Barrows approaches the southern Negro’s lifestyle and to expand on the differences between the quality of life before the Civil war and after during June of 1891. Barrows is striving to educate and expand on the difficulties that the Negro’s are working through in order to make their lifestyle equal to the whites to the other American citizens. Dedicated and confident Barrows is educating the American citizens, both Negroes and whites, but utilizing motivational imagery to give them a sense of hope, many different …show more content…

Throughout the passage, Barrows uses a pattern where he will utilize the imagery, and then bring up the present and the future. For those who do not already have a better future this is giving hope to them, but it is also a time where they can reflect on the past. It is not hard to see that the Negroes have worked their butts off to get the the place that they are today, and not everyone is even their. The trip that Barrows went on, where he traveled through a whole bunch of different places in the South, was an eye opener for all of the United States. Their is only a small portion of the Negroes that were able to start to make a decent living for themselves, because only a few number of them had an idea of what they were suppose to do. For instance Barrows says “Three courses were open to him as a free man: first, to rent his own labor; secondly, to rent and work the land of his former master; thirdly, to buy and work a farm for himself.” Barrows is expressing imagery here because he is showing what people could have, not all of the Negroes have it and the ones that do have it are only able to do one of the free things that are available to them. After the civil war, everyone was nervous for the changes that were to come because no one knew what was going to happen. The change was difficult for both races, and not all of the Negroes were able to grasp on the idea of …show more content…

The emotions that Barrows is trying to get across would not be powerful without him inserting personal anecdotes of the people who are actually living it. One can not imagine what their life would be like or describe it, without personally witnessing it or having someone who is living it describe it. For instance one of the anecdotes that was used is “Immediately after the war I lived at the national capital. Thousands of destitute blacks from Virginia and further south had settled in the barracks around the city. They owned little more than the clothes on their backs, and most of these had been given to them.” It is not like the Negroes had an easy start to freedom, the soldiers that fought in the civil war had to make their own life for themselves, with very little help from the government or anyone else. But this did not damper the Negroes, they kept their heads held high and kept moving forward with their life. Some of the other cases that Barrows had presented, he didn’t list any of the names for instance he spoke about a teacher who got a raise after the civil war because she was a black teacher. Other programs had used the extra money that they were earning to build more schools, and get teachers for the Negro children. Barrows insertion of anecdotes helped show the white citizens how proud the Negroes were how their new

Show More
Related

  • Understanding Slavery: Its Impact on American Psyche and Economy

    963 Words  | 2 Pages

    When reading about the institution of slavery in the United States, it is easy to focus on life for the slaves on the plantations—the places where the millions of people purchased to serve as slaves in the United States lived, made families, and eventually died. Most of the information we seek is about what daily life was like for these people, and what went “wrong” in our country’s collective psyche that allowed us to normalize the practice of keeping human beings as property, no more or less valuable than the machines in the factories which bolstered industrialized economies at the time. Many of us want to find information that assuages our own personal feelings of discomfort or even guilt over the practice which kept Southern life moving

    Read More

  • Summary On Myne Owne Ground

    1299 Words  | 3 Pages

    It shows that Negros were able to purchase their freedom and purchase the freedom of their family members. It shows a sense of equality in the way that free blacks could go to court and potentially win cases against white farmers. Free blacks owning slaves and indentured servants, some of which were white, could also be seen as equality. It also shows how free blacks had a thought of a future in the way that they drew up wills in which their family members were granted land and livestock. Knowing that white farming landowners and free blacks lived together in a sense of harmony goes back to the main theme of Myne Owne Ground. It shows that slavery is indeed an embarrassment to our nation. Knowing that blacks and whites were able to live together, trade, and be civil towards each other shows that slavery was unfounded and not

    Read More

  • Allegory Of The Cave Rhetorical Analysis

    466 Words  | 1 Pages

    In society it is a person’s duty to teach others what they do not know. People do not need to tell others of their knowledge, but in order for society to function together people must all be taught the basics of reality. In the parable “Allegory of the Cave” the author and philosopher, Plato, uses hypothetical situation, rhetorical questions, and diction to tell his audience that a person’s reality depends on the environment they are raised in, and how it is the responsibility of the ones knowledgeable to teach others so society can thrive with most of the same beliefs.

    Read More

  • The Road Rhetorical Analysis

    2437 Words  | 5 Pages

    Anticipation is prevalent throughout The Road, which is set by the narrative pace, creating a tense and suspenseful feeling and tone.

    Read More

  • Suffering and Struggle in Sonny´s Blues by James Baldwin

    1195 Words  | 3 Pages

    The transition of being a black man in a time just after slavery was a hard one. A black man had to prove himself at the same time had to come to terms with the fact that he would never amount to much in a white dominated country. Some young black men did actually make it but it was a long and bitter road. Most young men fell into the same trappings as the narrator’s brother. Times were hard and most young boys growing up in Harlem were swept off their feet by the onslaught of change. For American blacks in the middle of the twentieth century, racism is another of the dark forces of destruction and meaninglessness which must be endured. Beauty, joy, triumph, security, suffering, and sorrow are all creations of community, especially of family and family-like groups. They are temporary havens from the world''s trouble, and they are also the meanings of human life.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of John Reekie's The Burial Party

    1929 Words  | 4 Pages

    Many people were afraid of what would happen to society after the emancipation of the slaves and wondered if that emancipation was worth losing the lives of so many soldiers. Frederick Douglas gave what he believed to be a simple and obvious answer to the question of what should be done with the emancipated slaves once the war had ended in his article, “What Shall Be Done with the Slaves If Emancipated?” After emancipation, people were at a loss when it came to what to do with the black population, believing that “they would not work; they would become a burden upon the State, and a blot upon society” (Douglas 55). Douglas counters these fears by emphasizing the fact that black men will work for a living since work has been all they have known for their entire lives. Freed slaves were arguably the hardest working people of the time since they had no other choice than to do whatever work was thrown in front of their face, or else be severely punished. This is shown in this image as they work hard to do one of the most heart wrenching tasks possible: burying their fallen brothers. Douglas’ stance was clear- the freed black men and women were to be left alone to do what they felt they needed to do, without the interference of the white society. He argues that white people’s “doing with them [was] their great misfortune” and that “they have been undone by [their] doings” (Douglas 57). Douglas advocated that the answer to the question was obvious since the South needed black men to function. He states that the “black man as a freeman is a useful member of society. To drive him away, and thus deprive the South of his labor, would be… absurd and monstrous” (Douglas 59). This argument is shown through the picture- even though the men are free, they are still performing the hard work

    Read More

  • Were Black Americans Made Free and Equal by the Abolition of Slavery, 1865-1915?

    677 Words  | 2 Pages

    While the formal abolition of slavery, on the 6th of December 1865 freed black Americans from their slave labour, they were still unequal to and discriminated by white Americans for the next century. This ‘freedom’, meant that black Americans ‘felt like a bird out of a cage’ , but this freedom from slavery did not equate to their complete liberty, rather they were kept in destitute through their economic, social, and political state.

    Read More

  • The Lovely Bones Rhetorical Analysis

    995 Words  | 2 Pages

    Photographs capture the essence of a moment because the truth shown in an image cannot be questioned. In her novel, The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold uses the language of rhetoric to liberate Abigail from the façade of being a mother and spouse in a picture taken by her daughter, Susie. On the morning of her eleventh birthday, Susie, awake before the rest of the family, discovers her unwrapped birthday present, an instamatic camera, and finds her mother alone in the backyard. The significance of this scene is that it starts the author’s challenge of the false utopia of suburbia in the novel, particularly, the role of women in it.

    Read More

  • Simple Justice

    1367 Words  | 3 Pages

    This story was set in the deep south were ownership of African Americans was no different than owning a mule. Demonstrates of how the Thirteenth Amendment was intended to free slaves and describes the abolitionist’s efforts. The freedom of African Americans was less a humanitarian act than an economic one. There was a battle between the North and South freed slaves from bondage but at a certain cost. While a few good men prophesied the African Americans were created equal by God’s hands, the movement to free African Americans gained momentum spirited by economic and technological innovations such as the export, import, railroad, finance, and the North’s desire for more caucasian immigrants to join America’s workforce to improve our evolving nation. The inspiration for world power that freed slaves and gave them initial victory of a vote with passage of the Fifteenth Amendment. A huge part of this story follows the evolution of the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment more acts for civil rights.

    Read More

  • The Impact Of The Louisiana Purchase

    970 Words  | 2 Pages

    The African-American Years: Chronologies of American History and Experience. Ed. Gabriel Burns Stepto. New York: Charles Scribner 's Sons, 2003.

    Read More

  • The Raven Rhetorical Analysis

    1017 Words  | 3 Pages

    Edgar Allen Poe’s poem, "The Raven" starts off in a dark setting with an apartment on a "bleak December" night. The reader meets an agonized man sifting through his books while mourning over the premature death of a woman named Lenore. When the character is introduced to the raven he asks about Lenore and the chance in afterlife in which the bird replies “nevermore” which confirms his worst fears. This piece by Edgar Allen Poe is unparalleled; his poem’s theme is not predictable, it leads to a bitter negative ending and is surrounded by pain. To set this tone, Poe uses devices such as the repetition of "nevermore" to emphasize the meaning of the word to the overall theme; he also sets a dramatic tone that shows the character going from weary

    Read More

  • Use of the Nation of Islam in Down at the Cross

    1977 Words  | 4 Pages

    Baldwin begins his essay with a recount of his childhood, growing up black in a nation which considered itself white. Baldwin explains the uphill battle fought by every American Negro, how many “were clearly headed for the Avenue” (Baldwin 296) of whores, pimps, and racketeers. Baldwin argues that the American Negro was doomed to remain in the same state in which he or she was brought into the world, just as “girls were destined to gain as much weight as their mothers, the boys … would rise no higher than their fathers” (Baldwin 298). Even an education would not rescue one from “the man’s” oppression. The man, of course, is the white man who “would never, by the operation of any generous human feel...

    Read More

  • A Raisin in the Sun: The Duality of African-America, George Murchison and Joseph Asagai

    1367 Words  | 3 Pages

    “The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, – this longing to attain self-consciousness, manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message f...

    Read More

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

    1143 Words  | 3 Pages

    One of the key arguments in “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” as well as in other narratives about slaves is inequality. Douglass attempts to show us how African American slaves were still human beings like their white counterparts, there have been numerous instances where it is shown that many whites did not want to accept slaves as true humans. Frederick Douglass also perceived racial inequalities at a very young age and notes “I do not remember ever met a slave who could tell his or her birthday. They seldom come nearer to it than planting-time, harvest-time, cherry-time, spring-time, or fall-time. A want of information concerning my own was a source of unhappiness to me even during childhood. The white children could tell their ages. I could not tell why I ought to be deprived of the same privilege” (13). Douglass also takes the argument of inequality one step further by making remarks upon the difference between the white and black children. Instead of accepting the difference that he is aware of even the minor details of inequalities. These descriptions of inequality are stated in the first half of the book and help us as readers realize the true “worth” of a slave. Frederick Douglass states “We were all ranked together at the valuation. Men and women, old and young, married and single, were ranked with horses, sheep and swine. There w...

    Read More

  • The Sky Is Gray Metaphors

    1488 Words  | 3 Pages

    In this scene we see an example of how many African Americans believed in the 1940’s, most had a parent or grandparent who had been a slave and the South still ran itself that demanded subservience from African Americans. According to Tickamyer and Duncan children of black rural laborers in the south had no opportunity for advancement (Tickamyer and Duncan p.74) a third of the people living in rural areas lived in poverty compared to 15% in urban areas and 18% in central cities (Tickamyer

    Read More

More about Rhetorical Analysis On Barrows

Open Document