More handpicked essays just for you.
Analysis of the narrative of frederick douglass
Essay on a slave narrative
Narrative frederick douglass analysis
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
“Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass” written by Frederick Douglass. His main point was that education was the only way for slaves to achieve freedom. The book was about Douglass life as slave, and how difficult it was, until he became educated. He thought that through education he could achieve the goal of becoming free which he did. He wanted to help other slaves achieve it as well, so he taught them how to read and write just like his masters did for him. He tried to convey his story to show the power of education it provides for everyone. Education for him, led him to move on from ignorance and understand his surroundings. Douglass made it clear that education was a very important factor to freedom using pathos, ethos, and personification …show more content…
in order to identify the problem slaves had and how the lack of education deprived them from reaching the freedom that all humans deserve and display the American hypocrisy. The first rhetorical device mentioned was pathos,shows emotions. It was used by Douglass to convey emotions he felt towards the slaves and their mistreatment.
Douglass was mistreated for many reasons, but the most important because he was a slave. Douglass states “I was seldon whipped by my old master, and sutured little from… hunger and cold.”(Douglass 57) This quote explains how bad he was mistreated by one of his masters also slaves such as himself were in poor conditions of living. The quote uses pathos by revealing how angry the slaves could be at their master for dehumanizing them. It gives a sense of pity towards the reader. Frederick Douglass uses pathos to display how little slaves knew about themselves. He adopts a sympathetic tone in order to display and emphasize how slaves lack knowledge due to the mistreatment from their masters. Douglass appeals to the reader by accentuating that slaves lacked knowledge. He uses pathos, also simile, and states “... slaves know as little of their age as horses know of theirs...”(Douglass 41)in order to clarify that they didn't that slaves did not have education and it was allowed by their masters. This shows the American hypocrisy because they were taking away rights from the African American community and they were also …show more content…
humans. The second rhetorical device used was ethos, appeals to high authority in this case the law, Douglass uses it to reveal that the only way that he could help slaves is by educating them even if he might get into trouble because of that. Frederick Douglass uses ethos to emphasize how much trouble his master could get from helping him learn. He adopts a serious tone to point out that if this occurred it could lead to serious consequences. Douglass appeals to the reader by emphasizing consequences of him learning. He uses ethos and states “... among other things, that it was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read.”(Douglass 63). He clarifies that he knew what could happened if someone found out he was getting educated by his master. Both of them knew, yet she wanted to help him. Douglass uses ethos to display the knowledges he learned. He adopts a sense of capability and angry toward his masters on his education and what it taught him about his surroundings. Douglass appeals to the audience by emphasizing his knowledge on his surroundings by using ethos. He uses ethos and states “ The bread I used to bestow upon the hungry little urchins, who, in return, would give me that more valuable bread of knowledge” (Douglass 24). He clarifies that his education helped him see the mistreatment given to him and other slaves by their masters, he gives himself credibility. This may support the American hypocrisy because they were promised better life conditions yet they couldn't even get knowledge and were said to be less than others. The final rhetorical device mentioned in the introduction was personification, to make a object or item have human qualities. Personification in Douglass’s narrative helps portray a sense of irony.
Douglass uses personification to bring a everyday life object to life and emphasize the author's perspective feelings. He adopts a depressing tone in order to show the pain these slaves were feeling and its affect on them. Douglass appeals to the reader by pointing out that slaves freedom relied on their knowledge. Personification was stated on page 57 and said “...as much respected as though his guilty soul had not been stains…” This is to say that a soul is guilty which means that the person has done something that they'll carry through eternity. Douglass uses personification to contrast how object can be seen as if they had human characteristics. He adopts a sense of angriness from what the masters had done. Douglass appeals to the reader by emphasizing mistreatment. Personification was stated “That Cheerful eye, under the influence of slavery, soon became red with rage”(Douglass 20) clarifies that anger they felt toward their masters and how that affected them, how they used to be happy living their culture and now they are being dehumanized. The use of personification presents American hypocrisy because they were treated inhumanely. In conclusion, the purpose why Douglass emphasizes his slavery using rhetorical
devices is so that the reader sees that the mistreatment towards slaves was degrading and they were dehumanized, they were no longer people, slaves lived in very harsh, poor conditions that no human being no matter what they look like should be treated like that and Douglass thought that education was the way that slaves could be free and in a sense be human again because they would have knowledge to stand up for themselves with no ones help. Pathos in his book emphasize his emotional face, it showed that he was a human and that him and all slaves should be treated like so. Ethos emphasized the logic in his head and in others who thought and knew slavery was wrong and that they shouldn't have been treated like that. Finally, personification made the purpose more outstanding to the reader because it helped convey a sorrow felt by Douglass and how he was emotionally scarred for the mistreatment received.
Douglass views his education as his most important feature, but he also enables his brain to the realizing of the torture upon his fellow slaves. Douglass was not allowed to learn, because he was a slave, and they didn’t want slaves to become smarter than the whites. In the passage it states, “learning would ...
slave’s punishment. He says, for example, “I shudder when I recollect that the birds had
He had long fought to learn to read and was so excited and eager to do so, he never expected the circumstances of this to be as dehumanizing as they were. He regretted learning to read because it brought him nothing but desperation, he learned his awful truth and that of his fellow slaves. "It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy." (Douglass, 24) The truth was that the more he learned the more he became aggravated, he knew there was not much he could do. It brought his moral down along with many other feelings, even a slave like Frederick had learned the awful feeling of
In this narrative, Douglass describes his life as a slave in ways that is brutalizing and dehumanizing. He wants his readers to understand that concept. By doing this, Douglass writes, “I was seized with a violent aching of the head, attended with extreme dizziness; I trembled in every limb” (416). Douglass uses diction such as seized, aching, extreme dizziness, and trembled to help create a picture of the pain he had felt during his experiences of being a slave for Mr. Covey. Another example is when he writes, “I told him as well as I could, for I scarce had strength to speak. He then gave me a savage kick in the side, and told me to get up I tried to do so, but fell back in the attempt. He gave me another kick, and again told me to rise. I again tried, and succeeded in gaining my feet; but stooping to get the tub with which I was feeding the fan, I again staggered and fell” (416-17). Words like scarce, savage, and staggered place imagery into the reader’s minds of what he went through as a slave. One other way that Douglass shows how his words emphasize the message is when he writes, “The blood was yet oozing from the wound on my head. For a time I thought I should bleed to death; and think now that I should have done so, but that the blood so matted my hair as to stop the w...
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
Their education had given them a new perspective of everything around them—a glimpse to a whole new world. Upon learning to read, Douglass began to realize how an education could ruin slaves. With education, comes enlightenment, and for him his enlightenment was the realization to the injustices going on around him. With him finally being able to read, he understood more fully the implications of slavery sometimes served to make him more miserable as he came to comprehend the hopelessness of the situation for himself and the other slaves. He states in his narrative, “In moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me” (268) because he realized that his knowledge came at a cost—he knew that there was nothing normal and right about slavery, yet he had to live as one—whatever knowledge he had attained, festered in his mind and made him even unhappier with the conditions and treatment than
Literacy plays an important part in helping Douglass achieve his freedom. Learning to read and write enlightened his mind to the injustice of slavery; it kindled in his heart longings for liberty. Douglass’s skills proved instrumental in his attempts of escape and afterwards in his mission as a spokesman against slavery.
Douglass' enslaved life was not an accurate representation of the common and assumed life of a slave. He, actually, often wished that he was not so different and had the same painful, but simpler ignorance that the other slaves had. It was his difference, his striving to learn and be free, that made his life so complicated and made him struggle so indefinitely. Douglass expresses this in writing, "I envied my fellow slaves for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a beastIt was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me" (Douglass, 53).
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.
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.
Douglass's narrative is, on one surface, intended to show the barbarity and injustice of slavery. However, the underlying argument is that freedom is not simply attained through a physical escape from forced labor, but through a mental liberation from the attitude created by Southern slavery. The slaves of the South were psychologically oppressed by the slaveholders' disrespect for a slave’s family and for their education, as well as by the slaves' acceptance of their own subordination. Additionally, the slaveholders were trapped by a mentality that allowed them to justify behavior towards human beings that would normally not be acceptable. In this manner, both slaveholder and slave are corrupted by slavery.
Frederick Douglass’ landmark narrative describes the dehumanization of African-American slaves, while simultaneously humanizing them through his moving prose. Douglass shows the dehumanization of slaves through depictions of violence, deindividuation, and the broken justice system. However, Douglass’ pursuit of an education, moving rhetoric, and critique of his own masters demonstrates to the reader that African-Americans are just as intelligent as white people, thus proving their humanity.
Without being educated, slavers endure dehumanization and the control of their slaveholders. As a result, Douglass is motivated to get literate with ingenious strategies. He constantly bribes the “little white boys” and the “poor white children” who live closely with him to teach him reading with extra bread (Douglass 62). His writing lessons are from the boys who can compete with him in writing letters, Master Thomas’s book, and ship-yard. Along with his reading’s improvement, he comprehends the injustice between slaves and slaveholders from the books. A book “The Columbian Orator”, which provokes him the critical thinking about slavery and freedom. Through reading the Sheridan’s speeches that are from the same book, he claims, “[w]hat I got from Sheridan was a bold denunciation of slavery, and a powerful vindication of human rights” (Douglass 62). Sometimes he listens the discussion of abolition even though he does not really understands it. Until he gets a city paper that allows him to pray for “the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia” (Douglass 63), he understands the meaning of abolition. Being literate helps him understand the extensive knowledge, which is ready for
As both the narrator and author of “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, Written by Himself” Frederick Douglass writes about his transition from a slave to a well educated and empowered colored young man. As a skilled and spirited man, he served as both an orator and writer for the abolitionist movement, which was a movement to the abolishment of slavery. At the time of his narrative’s publication, Douglass’s sole goal of his writings was to essentially prove to those in disbelief that an articulate and intelligent man, such as himself, could have,in fact, been enslaved at one point in time. While, Douglass’ narrative was and arguably still is very influential, there are some controversial aspects of of this piece, of which Deborah McDowell mentions in her criticism.
Slavery system is keeping the slaves not educated, so they will not know their rights in life as human beings and leave. For example, his mistress changed the way of treating him and stopped teaching him the alphabets once she knew that education may give Douglass freedom; he will stop serving her and leave. She knew that “Education and slavery were incompatible with each other” (61). In other words, if he knows how to read and write, he will know his rights in life, and he will not be a slave anymore. As a result, she stopped teaching him and changed her way of treatment. Then, he started to make friendships with the white boys in the street in order to learn how to read, and he succeeded at this matter. As he started reading books about slavery, Douglass finds that reading is being a “curse” to him, “I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy” (63). He thought of learning to read has opened his eyes up to his