Fredrick Douglass used figurative language, in The Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, to reflect his sentiments about his enslaved conditions. Douglass is able to maneuver his writing to reflect his emotions and beliefs about his state of enslavement; more specifically by utilizing: imagery, diction, and selection of detail. The use of these devices helps to establish what he went through during slavery. As Douglass tells his story he purposely includes – and excludes – certain details to help conceptualize what he went through and what his sentiments were during this time period. It is true that Douglass uses many literary devices throughout the text; however, Fredrick Douglass used imagery, diction, and selection of detail to display …show more content…
One can tell, at any given moment, what Douglass feels emotionally by his use of diction. Whether he’s scared, happy, or sad the word choice can be identified. Douglass is always alluding to what he wants the others to grasp through his diction of the text. He is able to say, “Let me be free! Is there any God? Why am I a slave?” (Douglass) and one immediately understands what he means by using direct and powerful language. They can tell, simply, because he uses voice in his writing. He uses questions and exclamation to demonstrate what he is thinking and feeling. Douglass is clearly capable of using diction to help make his point of, “O, why was I born a man, of whom to make a brute” because he is, in a way, yelling at himself and his sorrowful life (Douglass). Anyone can blankly see, because of his word choice, that Douglass’ life was hard and he is constantly questioning himself: is it worth living? The answer to this question can be discovered, simply, by one sentence from his text with no contextual evidence needed. This is a very profound ability that only certain authors possess. Douglass is adept at letting his audience grasp his usage of terminology while writing and what they need to comprehend to get the real story of what happened. As he states, “You are loosed from your moorings, and are free; I am fast in my chains, and am a slave” (Douglass). …show more content…
Douglass consciously uses imagery to display what is happening and how he felt at the time being. He wants to emulate this feeling, to make others see what traumatic events he went through. While describing how the ships are free and he isn’t, Douglass begins to describe how confined his life felt, “You are freedom’s swift-winged angels, that fly round the world; I am confined in the bands of iron” (Douglass), the audience is more than capable of understanding how the imagery helps allude to what Douglass saw. They now have a better understanding of the horror that Douglass went through during this harsh time, realizing that Douglass doesn’t have any sense of freedom, but instead he feels trapped. One can clearly see the sentiments of Douglass’ thoughts to make sure he keeps his beliefs, “I will do the same; and when I get to the head of the bay, I will turn my canoe adrift, and walk straight through Delaware into Pennsylvania. When I get there, I shall not be required to have a pass; I can travel without being disturbed” (Douglass). He also exhibits how important it is to do so to try and become a freed slave through imagery. He uses imagery while describing, “…those beautiful vessels, robed in purest white…” (Douglass). Douglass is using these vessels to show how an inanimate object is freer than him. He conveys an underlying terror
Frederick Douglass wrote in his 1845 autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, about the devastation associated with slavery and the destruction from which comes desperation. Douglass intends to summon upon the guilt and empathy of his white audience by giving an account from which the reader is able to coax up a new perspective on the dreadful oppression. Seen especially in the third paragraph where Douglass provides a series of rhetorical devices including: apostrophe, anaphora, personification, exemplum, and epithet in his sorrowful bellowing to passing ships.
Frederick Douglass, an African American social reformer who escaped from slavery, in his autobiography “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself,” denotes the perilous life of a slave in the South. Through syntax, Douglass is able to persuade his readers to support the abolitionist movement as his writing transitions from shifting sentence lengths to parallel structure and finally to varying uses of punctuation. Douglass begins his memoir with a combination of long and short sentences that serve to effectively depict life his life as a slave. This depiction is significant because it illustrates the treatment of slaves in the south allows his audience to despise the horrors of slavery. In addition, this
Literature is written in many ways and styles. During his time, Frederick Douglass’s works and speeches attracted many people’s attention. With the amount of works and speeches Douglass has given, it has influenced many others writers to express themselves more freely. Though Douglass lived a rigorous childhood, he still made it the best that he could, with the guidance and teaching of one of his slave owner’s wife he was able to read and write, thus allowing him to share his life stories and experiences. Douglass’s work today still remain of great impact and influence, allowing us to understand the reality of slavery, and thus inspiring many others to come out and share for others to understand.
In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, a slave narrative published in 1845, Frederick Douglass divulged his past as a slave and presented a multifaceted argument against slavery in the United States. Douglass built his argument with endless anecdotes and colorful figurative language. He attempted to familiarize the naïve Northerners with the hardships of slavery and negate any misconstrued ideas that would prolong slavery’s existence in American homes. Particularly in chapter seven, Douglass both narrated his personal experience of learning to write and identified the benefits and consequences of being an educated slave.
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, written by Frederick Douglass himself, is a brutally honest portrayal of slavery's dehumanizing capabilities. The style of this famous autobiography can be best described as personal, emotional, and compelling. By writing this narrative, Douglass wants his audience to understand him. He does this by speaking informally, like a person would when writing a letter or telling a story to a friend. By clearly establishing his credibility and connecting with his audience, Douglass uses numerous rhetorical devices to argue for the immorality of slavery.
Frederick Douglass uses the rhetorical appeal, ethos, in two specific ways: to provide the credence of his statements and to identify himself to the reader. Douglass uses his writing skills to provide a familiar perception to which his readers are accustomed. He does not provide exact dates to accompany his story, because slaves back then were kept ignorant, as Douglass states, “I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it” (Douglass 19). Our culture thrives on important dates such as, someone’s birthday, a holiday, or an anniversary, etc., and Douglass was blind to all of these events. He identifies himself as a normal human being, when in fact, he has had what seems like to us, a completely
The Narrative of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass is written to have people place their feet in the shoes of Frederick Douglass and try to understand the experience he went through as a slave. Douglass writes this piece of literature with strong wording to get his point across. He is not trying to point out the unpleasant parts of history, but to make people face the truth. He wants readers to realize that slavery is brutalizing and dehumanizing, that a slave is able to become a man, and that some slaves, like himself, have intellectual ability. These points are commonly presented through the words of Douglass because of his diction.
As a former slave, bereft of any free will, written words were all but unavailable to Frederick Douglass. Slaves were unable to tell their stories, to expose the dehumanization that their enslavement caused on both sides of the racial rift; so it was necessary for Douglass to fight tooth and nail to obtain the right to learn, and ultimately to narrate his own life story. Amongst the narration, multiple rhetorical strategies are integrated into the text in order to uncover the dehumanizing effect their mistreatment had on slaves during this time. His primary purpose is to educate those who are ignorant of the horrible conditions that slaves lived in and the cruelty that they suffer. He does this through the use of rhetorical devices such as anecdotes, irony and by further connecting to his audience with pathos and ethos. By using his own personal experiences as the subject of his argument, Douglass is able to make a strong and compelling case against slavery; at a time when it was socially unacceptable to do so.
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
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 his narrative, Douglass layers the many brutal, cruel, inhumane, and true components of slavery in his life, underlying each story with a political motive and relation. This method of writing was for his audience removed from slavery, those ignorant of slavery, uninformed, misunderstood, and those who were fortunate to have freedom. Douglass illustrates living conditions, experiences, tragedies, and struggles to great depths. Everywhere, African Americans escaped the binds of slavery due to Frederick Douglass' determination. He revolutionized America, being one of the greatest leaders of the abolition, being the reason for so many freed lives, and leading to the complete abolition and illegality of slavery in America.
Slavery consisted of numerous inhumane horrors completed to make its victims feel desolated and helpless. Many 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.
Though this poem is only a small snapshot of what I personally thought Douglass was going through, I could never adequately understand the frustration he must have had. My hope in writing this poem was not to provide a psychoanalysis or theoretical idea structure to any audience, but rather to show that even today, a modern audience member like me, can appreciate the struggle of a fellow human and speak against injustices, specifically in Douglass’s time.
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.
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