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Biography about frederick douglass essay
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Biography about fredrick douglass essay
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In the excerpt taken from Frederick Douglass’ Narrative on the Life of Frederick Douglass (University of Virginia Library. Web. 15 Dec. 2015) Douglass depicts his thoughts to the reader regarding his growing knowledge, a self-reflecting depiction full of emotion and negativity. He illustrates the agony of thinking and the burden it places on him. Through his self-reflection, Douglass explains the pain and discomfort his expanding knowledge bears upon him, a young boy exploring his present world to discover that maybe ignorance really is bliss. Through the use of several literary devices such as specified diction, irony, and parallelism, the speaker relays a desperate tone throughout this section of his narrative elaborating on the torment …show more content…
he felt. Douglass commences his illustration with a periodic sentence with an ironic stance: “ In moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity.” The irony revolves around a thought not commonly desired, to be envious of one’s stupidity, yet the author feels this jealousy for the ignorance of his fellow slaves. This captures the reader’s attention, guiding them to begin to understand the feelings the author experiences. The following short, simple sentence gets to the point right away: “I have often wished myself a beast.” This gives the reader a clear glimpse into Douglass’ feeling of hopelessness and wanting to escape, resolving to go as far as becoming a lowly creature, a reptile, with no wish to be a human capable of the wretched, troublesome thoughts and ideas. Douglass continues elaborating on just how far he considers going to rid himself of his troubling burden, affirming his desperation with an exclamatory sentence: “Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking!” He exclaims his frustration with “thinking,” the concept of understanding and the ideas that come with the advancement of knowledge.
Consequently, the speaker’s knowledge makes it evident that the notion to become free lies just too far out of reach. The speaker continues his portrayal of “thinking” leading up to this assertive statement: “There was no getting rid of it.” Another short sentence where he faces the hopeless realization that there is nothing he can do. He remains stuck with his knowledge; he cannot become a beast or change anything to escape thinking. Following that idea, a new sentence contains the use of descriptive antithesis, to expand on the constant presence of his ever burdensome learning. Within the sentence the author continues to wallow in his perpetual plight when he construes the ubiquity writing, “sight or hearing” in mentioning this, he expands the presence of the inescapable pressure into two specific senses. He continues his depiction with contrasting “animate or inanimate” although the clear distinction, this collectively includes and molds every possible object into a reminder of his
torment. Throughout his description, the speaker utilizes diction with negative connotations to emphasize the pain he feels from his ability to think. He refers to his resentment saying he “writhed under it… [it] had been a curse rather than a blessing”; his metaphoric actions, although they may not be literal, paint the discomfort and duress he endures with this burden. The contrast between curse and blessing depicts an almost ironic feel, whereas Douglass grew into the driving and thirst for knowledge and the ability to read would be a skill that other slaves would find a blessing. Twice, Douglass mentions his growing knowledge as a “wretched condition,” a condition “without the remedy.” He portrays it to be a disease, not only a common cold but a disease with no cure. The fact that this disease is incurable reiterates the hopelessness in ridding himself of this “ever present… torment.” Again the speaker utilizes a paradox in writing, “Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever.” The reader recognizes the opposing “appeared to disappear” as yet another example portraying the tone of desperation the speaker feels. He continues to emphasize his torment using parallelism in repetitive phrase structure saying, “I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling it.” He continues using parallelism with word agreement when he writes “It looked from every star, it smiled in every calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm.” Douglass advances through his portrayal to illustrate how omnipresent his struggle is and how it connects every part of him and the world around him. Douglass uses various literary devices to effectively describe his atmosphere, convey his inner thoughts and feelings, and to picture a young man losing hope. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass applies pathos to attract the reader and to allow the audience to take a moment to empathize with him, as a knowledgeable slave who discovers that knowledge comes with a troublesome price.
The hopeful and then helpless tones in Douglass' passage reflect his inner turmoil throughout the process of his escape from the wretched south. At first, Frederick Douglass feels the utter feeling of happiness covering every inch of his body and soul. However, he soon finds out that the rosy path has thorns that dug into his skin as freedom was dangled in front of his face through a tunnel of complete darkness.
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, “The Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass”, readers get a first person perspective on slavery in the South before the Civil War. The author, Frederick Douglass, taught himself how to read and write, and was able to share his story to show the evils of slavery, not only in regard to the slaves, but with regard to masters, as well. Throughout Douglass’ autobiography, he shares his disgust with how slavery would corrupt people and change their whole entire persona. He uses ethos, logos, and pathos to help establish his credibility, and enlighten his readers about what changes needed to be made.
...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.
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
Deviating from his typically autobiographical and abolitionist literatures, Frederick Douglass pens his first work of fiction, “The Heroic Slave,” the imagined backstory of famed ex-slave Madison Washington, best known for his leadership in a slave rebellion aboard about the slave ship Creole. An interesting plot and Douglass’ word choice provide a powerful portrait of slavery and the people affected by it.
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.
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.
In this final research analysis, I will be doing a comparison between the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” and the “Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson” to show how both Douglass and Rowlandson use a great deal of person strength and faith in God to endure their life and ultimately gain their freedom.
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.
The Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass can be referred to as a memoir and writing about the abolitionist movement of the life of a former slave, Fredrick Douglass. It is a highly regarded as the most famous piece of writing done by a former slave. Fredrick Douglass (1818-1895) was a social reformer, statesman, orator and writer in the United States. Douglass believed in the equality of every individual of different races, gender or immigrants.