David Walker's Appeal Summary

The Unusual Use of Animals to Portray People in David Walker’s Appeal

Throughout much of early African American literature, as well as the writings of white people in reference to African Americans during the same time period, there is a tendency to compare humans to animals. This language, most often, is at the expense of people of color. These animals tend to be beasts and savages, promoting the idea of violence among the people they are being compared to. Even when the animal in question is peaceful, the simile is intended to promote the idea of being ignorant, stupid, or easily manipulated.
The choice Walker has made to include these animals is intended to better connect to the audience of his appeal. The passages involving animals

often comes after lengths of rhetorical questions, or other repetitive language, and can be used to build interest. The appeal is to coloured citizens, and in 1829 when it was published, many coloured people were unable to read. Walker intended for his appeal to be performed aloud, as well as read, and because of this, brought in these animals to draw the listeners back to his argument.
Although Walker will compare both black men and black women to brutes throughout each of the four articles of his Appeal To The Coloured Citizens of The World, he additionally strays from the typical narrative and compares white people to animals as well. In his first article, Walker writes “There are, indeed, more ways to kill a dog, besides choking it to death with butter” (Walker 16). At the first glance, a quite violent image is placed into the audience’s mind. But when one looks closer at the passage, and the time it was written, it is evident that butter is being used as a luxury.
Since luxuries to African Americans were concepts such as being the owners of their own bodies, the luxury of butter then must apply to whites. Following this logic, the dog in question must be standing in for white people. Walker brings violence onto this dog, in the form of choking it with the luxurious butter. Looking at the metaphor that Walker has set up, this violence is meant to be a call for the uprising and consequential revolution of blacks against whites. This call to action is one of immediacy, for the simple act of people of color just handing over to whites the luxuries, and carefully planning their attacks, is slow. A death of smothering — or choking — takes time.
Walker puts further emphasis on this idea of revolting by including the word “indeed” at the beginning of the quote.

It is a forceful reminder pushed upon the audience that their complacency to serve the whites delicacies while they are suffering is a choice, whether they remember it to be or not. There is no direct reference to what kind of violence and death that Walker expects from his fellow people of color, but opens itself as an invitation to plan their own attempts to fights for their freedom and other rights that their white masters and mistresses had taken from them.
This is not the only instance in which the use of animals in the appeal strays from the degradation of African Americans. In the second article, Walker compares the children of color to horses, which come with the connotation of nobility and worth, when he writes “It is lamentable that many of our children go to school from four until they are eight or ten, or sometimes fifteen years of age, and leave school knowing but a little more about the grammar of their language than a horse does about handling a musket” (Walker

32).
A musket is a violent object, one that can cause a lot of damage, and by putting it in the hands of an animal who does not know how to utilize it, Walker has put an image of brutality into the minds of his audience. The comparison that is made between a horse and a musket, and a coloured child and their education proposes that white people tend to see education as a weapon or tool that could be used against them. By pointing out the fact that limited knowledge of grammar is not a sign of a highly educated individual, Walker attacks the misconceptions of other people of color, as well as another method that white people of the time were using to oppress African Americans.
This passage does not stop at simply addressing the concept that knowledge is a tool for rebellion, but instead additionally points out the time and effort that goes into racial oppression.

Walker is redundant in pointing out the passage of time; he forces the reader to think of a child aging from four until they are eight, or ten, or fifteen years old, a minimum of four years passing where these children are supposed to be learning. This emphasis on the passage of time drives home the concept that much of these years are being wasted, and the children, at no fault of their own, are not benefiting from these years in the

schoolhouse.
The other choice that Walker made within this selection was the use of the word “lamentable”. For something to be lamentable, it means that it is regrettable, or unfortunate. This idea of regret prefaces the entire quote, to further emphasize the disappointment that he had with the structure of education for people of color. The idea of limited education on its own would invoke emotions of disappointment and frustration within Walker’s targeted audience, but by labeling it for such intentions the impact of the lament is more powerful.
These two selections are not the only instances in which Walker uses the imagery of animals paired with violence. Both ideas are well-known not just to the audience of the appeal, but to the entirety of the population. By being accessible and memorable, these passages will be what the audience will take away from the entirety of the work. Such language is utilized in an effective way to call on people of color to join David Walker in his quest to rise up and revolt against the white population, and to create a better educated race. Walker proves that the language that usually compares animals with humans is not limited to being about people of color, and that even when it is, there is no need for it to be derogatory.