Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass Rhetorical Analysis

552 Words3 Pages

When your freedom or even your own life is challenged, you will do most anything to get what you deserve. In the novel Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Douglass shares his experiences with regard to the risks he took to gain what he felt he deserved, his freedom. Douglass shares his life story by appealing to ethos, pathos, and logos to demonstrate the horror and inhumanity of slavery, which he not only wanted to escape, but fight to end. Douglass’s appeal to ethos is strong because of his first hand experiences. He is able to share real-life stories and help explain to the audience why this is inhumane, foul, and unsound. Douglass first shows this appeal in the first chapter saying, “I do not remember to have ever met a slave who could tell of his birthday… The white children could tell their ages. I could not tell why I ought to be deprived of the same privilege” (Douglass 19). This was good to start showing that slaves know no details about their own life, but the white people even the children know every detail of theirs. …show more content…

As he shares his experiences he helps the audience feel the shame of being a slave, as every slave had. Douglass talks about Colonel Lloyd’s sons and son-in-laws saying, “All of these lived at the Great House Farm, and enjoyed the luxury of whipping the servants when they pleased… I have seen Winder (One of Colonel Lloyd’s son-in-laws) make one of the house servant stand off from him a suitable distance to be touched with the end of his whip, and at every stroke raise great ridges upon his back” (Douglass 34). Sharing this experience and detail shows how cruel whites were to the

Open Document