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Reading Log Chapter One Title: ‘A Witness of Blood’ Reader Response: In this chapter, Douglass speaks about his relationship with his mother, and the possible whereabouts of his father. He pleas to our pathos by detailing the “whispers” of the possibility of his master being his dad. He reveals the way slaves are treated, and the lack of knowledge they are given about their life. For instance, Douglass mentions he is unaware of his birthday or exact age. He also includes a brutal description of the first time he witnessed someone being beat, and the blood. We as readers feel sympathy for the terrible inhumane upbringing that he and other slaves face. Rhetorical Device: Sentence: “I was not allowed to be present during her illness, at her death, or burial.” Douglass uses parallelism by verbally constructing the demise of his mom in a corresponding manor. By doing this, the audience feels for Douglass and it evokes our pathos. This description furthers the absent relationship between him and his mother. Douglass also says that when his mother dies he feels as that of a stranger to her and the situation. We as readers grieve this situation. By listing in order the unfortunate events, we see how his situation gets worse as it continues. This is a metaphor for being a slave, as you get older the punishments you receive are worse until you one day …show more content…
He explains the allowance for children and is the yearly clothing is given to their mothers or caretaker. The children unable to work in the fields are left with two coarse linen shirts per year. The situation is described as miserable. Once the two shirts have failed and are worn out children will be left naked. Therefore, the imagery used helps to better the readers understanding of the situation. We can now comprehend the lifestyle of a slave in the field and a child of a slave. The described horrendous conditions are continued, as is our
The first and second paragraphs evidently consist of sentences of some sort of length, the third paragraphs are shorter, but, portray more meaning. Although the whole passage depicts powerful speech, the difference of syntax is defined by his day-to-day life, which is seen in the first and second paragraph, and his dreams, which is seen in the third paragraph. Furthermore, Douglass use of exclamation points, as it exemplifies his desperation and his yearning for freedom, in contrast to the first two paragraphs. Additionally, the parallelism in the third paragraph is completely different from the first two, Douglass uniforms his all his sentences in the third paragraph in a very similar way such as “O that I were free!, O, that I were on one of your gallant decks" (38). In using shorter very unsimilar syntax between the first two paragraphs and the third, Douglass renders that the slave is not an animal or beast, but a human being, that longs for nothing but to become
Analysis of “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”: Written by Aaron Wright and Nichole Smith
One of the amazing things about the story is the level of description and imagery that Douglass uses to describe the suffering around him. The excerpt spans a mere three days, but most of the text focuses on his abuse and battle with Mr. Covey. Douglass skips over the common parts of his life to further his case against slavery. By doing this, the Northerners rea...
Frederick Douglass emphasizes the dehumanization aspect of slavery throughout his narrative. As is the general custom in slavery, Douglass is separated from his mother early in infancy and put under the care of his grandmother. He recalls having met his mother several times, but only during the night. She would make the trip from her farm twelve miles away just to spend a little time with her child. She dies when Douglass is about seven years old. He is withheld from seeing her in her illness, death, and burial. Having limited contact with her, the news of her death, at the time, is like a death of a stranger. Douglass also never really knew the identity of his father and conveys a feeling of emptiness and disgust when he writes, "the whisper that my master was my father, may or may not be true; and, true or false, it is of but little consequence to my purpose" (Douglass, 40). Douglass points out that many slave children have their masters as their father. In these times, frequently the master would take advantage of female slaves and the children born to the slave w...
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.
Douglass uses irony to bring a point across to his audience, with the recounting of his own heritage. He explains that his separation after birth from his mother, a slave, and a majority of his foul treatment is likely because his white father feels a need to destroy the lives of his bastard children in order to reassert devotion to
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
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.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, brings to light many of the social injustices that colored men, women, and children all were forced to endure throughout the nineteenth century under Southern slavery laws. Douglass's life-story is presented in a way that creates a compelling argument against the justification of slavery. His argument is reinforced though a variety of anecdotes, many of which detailed strikingly bloody, horrific scenes and inhumane cruelty on the part of the slaveholders. Yet, while Douglas’s narrative describes in vivid detail his experiences of life as a slave, what Douglass intends for his readers to grasp after reading his narrative is something much more profound. Aside from all the physical burdens of slavery that he faced on a daily basis, it was the psychological effects that caused him the greatest amount of detriment during his twenty-year enslavement. In the same regard, Douglass is able to profess that it was not only the slaves who incurred the damaging effects of slavery, but also the slaveholders. Slavery, in essence, is a destructive force that collectively corrupts the minds of slaveholders and weakens slaves’ intellects.
The reader is first introduced to the idea of Douglass’s formation of identity outside the constraints of slavery before he or she even begins reading the narrative. By viewing the title page and reading the words “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, written by himself” the reader sees the advancement Douglass made from a dependent slave to an independent author (Stone 134). As a slave, he was forbidden a voice with which he might speak out against slavery. Furthermore, the traditional roles of slavery would have had him uneducated—unable to read and incapable of writing. However, by examining the full meaning of the title page, the reader is introduced to Douglass’s refusal to adhere to the slave role of uneducated and voiceless. Thus, even before reading the work, the reader knows that Douglass will show “how a slave was made a man” through “speaking out—the symbolic act of self-definition” (Stone 135).
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.
Frederick Douglass begins his memoir by describing his lack of knowledge about his own age, and equates his lack of knowledge with an animal. He claims that “Slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs.” It is such a revolting injustice that the slaves were not allowed to know the history of their personal lives, or lives of their families. The slaves were only allowed to know a cold world of work, crops, and brutality. Douglass was not allowed to know the identity of his father either. It is possible that his master was Douglass’s father but this was never clarified. It sickens me to think that slaves had to grow up alone in the world. Most did not know their mother or father and many worked their whole lives until they died. I cannot imagine what a life with no love, kindness, or family would be like, and yet so many African American children had to grow up with that life-style. Douglas “never saw his mother, more than four or five times” in his life because he was separated from her as an infant. He had no bond with his parents. I was also not aware that the slave owners often raped their slaves and expected their slaves to not protest or tell anyone. I was ignorant of the inhumane way in which the slave owners took the slave’s children away from their mothers at such young ages.
Douglass had little connection to his mother. They were separated when he was a baby due to slavery, and she died when he was a young boy at the age of seven. Connections to his father did not exist. The only thing that Douglass knew about his father was that he was a white man that left his mother immediately. After his mother died, Douglass was raised by his grandparents, Betsey and Isaac Bailey, until he would be transported to work in a shipyard that was owned by their master. His grandparents were the pinnacle of his life as a young slave. Although he did not have a strong connection with his mother, Douglass’s grandmother took the role of his mother and cared for him as if he was her own child. While his grandparents were his guardians, he experienced the hardship of slavery. Douglass’s childhood was harsh, but common compared to the childhood experience amongst slaves. He had his fair share of exposure to whippings and agony when he was young. However, when it was time for him to leave the comfort of his grandparents, especially his grandmother, he felt like he had lost a huge part of his life. His grandparents were all he could recall and all that he could express gratitude towards. And when his grandmother died, also around the age of seven, he broke down, and this is when his first realization of slavery settled in for him as a young boy.