Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison were the most famous abolitionists who spoke out publicity against slavery, racial discrimination, and were strong supporters of women’s rights. Douglass himself escaped from slavery and went from courage to freedom. He published his autobiography “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,” that is considered works of the narrative slave tradition and life learning lessons that he encountered. The narrative illustrates instances of Douglass courage on his journey. Freedom was not something that was given to him. He had to find it himself and never stopped at nothing until he lived to see the day that slavery was abolished. Douglass had an active involvement to better the lives of African Americans. One of the hardest lessons he had to learn was that the battle for his freedom doesn’t stop and he refused to stop before finding it. Douglass risked his freedom and wrote his Narrative. He wanted to get his message out about the hard life all slaves endured. Garrison helped him …show more content…
His lesson concludes that even though he values friendship, leaving friends behind is sometimes the right decision. Many slaves preferred to stay enslaved rather than leave to a strange place. Garrison played a major role in his life where he helped Douglass raise money to purchase his freedom. In the preface William Lloyd Garrison, present Douglass Narrative as an argument against slavery. He speaks about Douglass own work being truthful in the way that Douglass Narrative affects readers in an emotional way. According to Garrison, Douglass suffered but gained many valuable lessons. The case of Douglass is extreme because his story portrays a young man escaping slavery, understanding what it means to be a slave, becoming educated, and lessons he learned. He was inspired in making slaves free and arguing that slaves are American
Frederick Douglass wrote this autobiography, which contains many personal anecdotes of his life during slavery and how it impacted him. Douglass portrays through this excerpt that it wasn’t easy to live as a slave. He tells his audience how he wanted to leave and be free from all the misery he had suffered and continued suffering. In this passage from his autobiography, Douglass uses rhetorical strategies such as anaphora and pathos to give the audience an insight of what slavery was like.
How Douglass Demonstrated His Courage and How it is a Defining Element of The Human Spirit Frederick Douglass demonstrated many acts of courage in his narrative, many of which gave hope and inspiration to fellow slaves at the time. Slaves were treated very poorly and were given a low place in society. Those who supported slavery despised those who were against it, and any slaves who attempted to stand up for themselves or others were punished severely. To boldly stand up for what is morally right, especially during that time, was an enormous act of courage in itself. “It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog” (Twain).
The autobiography, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, written in 1845 in Massachusetts, narrates the evils of slavery through the point of view of Frederick Douglass. Frederick Douglass is a slave who focuses his attention into escaping the horrors of slavery. He articulates his mournful story to anyone and everyone, in hopes of disclosing the crimes that come with slavery. In doing so, Douglass uses many rhetorical strategies to make effective arguments against slavery. Frederick Douglass makes a point to demonstrate the deterioration slavery yields from moral, benevolent people into ruthless, cold-hearted people.
In the Star-Spangled Banner, a song written solely to represent the freedom of the Unites States, it specifically states, “For the land of the free and the home of the brave.” So, why did being brave in the home of the brave cause many slaves to be punished and broken down to believe they were worth nothing? Why were slaves not free in the land of the free? How did some slaves, such as Frederick Douglass, find freedom, while others never even came close? There are many factors that contribute to Douglass’ freedom but some main ones are that he realized it was not impossible, he had a want for more in his life, and he had strong determination that came from what he saw and experienced.
Frederick Douglass was a great writer, but he wasn’t always. He was an escaped slave who used that in his speeches as a topic to gain the attention of his audience. His audience was a seemingly sympathetic one and got to them through rhetorical questions. Douglass wanted to convey the message that there are many changes that need to be made.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Rhetorical Analysis By Migion Booth Social reformer, Frederick Douglass was an African American man who decamped from slavery. He has drafted several books including Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. In his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Mr. Douglass writes about his perspicacity as a slave. Mr. Douglass repeatedly uses paradox, imagery, and parallelism to display how slavery was inhuman and heartbroken.
Douglass managed to overcome the maltreatment of his wretched slave owners through the eventual attainment of freedom. The injustice imposed upon the African-American slaves by their owners was the crux of Douglass’s motivation to escape this inhumane life. Adolescents in today’s society could use Frederick’s determination as an example of moving forward to better oneself or one’s situation regardless of
Through his story, Douglass proves that slavery has negative effects on slaveholders. He uses imagery, flashbacks, and characterization to persuade the reader of the true nature of slavery. His deep thoughts and insights of slavery and the unbalanced power between a slaveholder and his slave are unprompted for a social establishment. Douglass insists that slaveholding fills the soul with sadness and bitter anguish. In addressing effects of slavery on masters cause one man to rethink his moral character and better understand the laws of humanity.
In “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, Douglass narrates in detail the oppressions he went through as a slave before winning his freedom. In the narrative, Douglass gives a picture about the humiliation, brutality, and pain that slaves go through. We can evidently see that Douglass does not want to describe only his life, but he uses his personal experiences and life story as a tool to rise against slavery. He uses his personal life story to argue against common myths that were used to justify the act of slavery. Douglass invalidated common justification for slavery like religion, economic argument and color with his life story through his experiences torture, separation, and illiteracy, and he urged for the end of slavery.
During that time African Americans were not seen as people, so Douglass had to fight against problems regarding slavery and his humanity every time he had to deliver one of his works. Douglass being a former slave made his words more powerful since he had to endure a lot. Through the use of imagery in his work, Douglass addresses events he and other slaves had to endure, making a difference in how people reacted. There were many abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison and Gerrit Smith. Nevertheless, they were both white, so they could not show problems about slavery in the same manner as Douglass could.
Since his early years, Douglass was opposed to slavery and showed a great self-esteem, especially in comparison with the other slaves who did not have such strong urge to protect themselves. After obtaining the reading skills, Douglass did not stop reflecting on the unfairness of the system he lived in. Indeed, Douglass himself wrote about his beliefs and regarded himself as a supporter of the rights of slaves but this was after the process of his regret, emotional loss, and inability to find the reasons for living, “I often found myself regretting my own existence, and wishing myself dead; and but for the hope of being free, I have no doubt but that I should have killed myself, or done something for which I should have been killed” (Douglass 36). Even during the time of despair, Douglass thought that he must be freed from the whole life of a slave. Apart from this, after he became free, this man was confident enough to talk to the white people and did not face the inner willingness to be too pleasing.
Frederick Douglass Rhetorical Analysis A famous slave and abolitionist in the struggle for liberty on behalf of American slaves, Frederick Douglass, in his autobiography published in 1845, portrayed the horrors of captivity in the South. Douglass’s purpose in the narrative was to show how slaves lived, what they experienced, and how they were unquestionably less comfortable in captivity than they would have been in a liberated world. He implemented a didactic tone to portray the viciousness of slave-owners and the severe living conditions for the slaves. Employing his experience as a slave, Douglass accurately expressed the terrors that he and the other slaves endured. In chapter six, Douglass described his involvement with his mistress,
Education Determines Your Destination Education is the light at the end of the tunnel, when Frederick uses it he discovers hope. In the story the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick goes through many struggles on his path to freedom, showing us the road from slavery to freedom. At the beginning of the book, Douglass is a slave in both body and mind. When the book ends, he gets both his legal freedom and frees his mind. The path to freedom was not easy, but it got clearer when he got an education.
Because of this, he successfully creates a contrast between what the slave owners think of and treat the slaves and how they are. Douglass says that slave’s minds were “starved by their cruel masters”(Douglass, 48) and that “they had been shut up in mental darkness” (Douglass, 48) and through education, something that they were deprived of, Frederick Douglass is able to open their minds and allow them to flourish into the complex people that they are. By showing a willingness to learn to read and write, the slaves prove that they were much more than what was forced upon them by their masters.
Douglass states: “The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery” (Douglass 51). Reading and writing opened Frederick Douglass’s eyes to the cause of the abolitionist. He became knowledgeable about a topic that white slave owners tried to keep hidden from their slaves. Literacy would eventually impact his life in more ways than what he could see while he was a young slave under Master Hugh’s