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Comparing Poems 'England In 1819 And Douglass'

1040 Words5 Pages

Starved bodies, corrupt kings, roaring waves of prejudice. These are the times that Shelley and Dunbar lived in. Whereas Shelley has a more optimistic attitude, Dunbar holds a more downtrodden one which is reflected in the different enemies, tones, and endings of the two poems. While both poems are set in trying times, they differ in their antagonists. Shelley faces a tangible evil, a person, while Dunbar faces an intangible one, a social concept. Both “England in 1819” and “Douglass” start by describing both their oppressors and the hardships the respective authors must undergo while under the rule of the villain’s tyranny. For Shelley it is “an old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King” and his successors (Shelley 1). The negative connotations and …show more content…

Dunbar’s villain, on the other hand, is racism: “For thy strong arm to guide the shivering bark / the blast-defying power of thy form”. Douglass as the “strong arm” is guiding Dunbar, “the shivering bark” through the hardship that he has already gone through. One can extrapolate that the hardship is racism because of the historical context of Frederick Douglass. The contrasting adjectives of “strong” and “shivering” provides both a sense of protection from the strong arm and emphasizes the inexperience and terror of the shivering bark. Shelley faces a tangible evil, a person, while Dunbar faces an intangible one, a social concept. Thus, how they hurt the respective poets are wildly different. Even the difference in language reflects how different the two subjects are. Shelley enumerates the crimes of the monarchy, citing the “people starved and stabbed

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Mark Twain and Frederick Douglass both have interesting ways of writing. There are similarities and differences in their writing. They each have their own personal preference toward their style, tone, and perspective. Each story was a remembrance of boyhood written in first person. As evident, Twain’s story takes place as a boy in a town on the Mississippi River.

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213 Words | 1 Pages

For my topic on Frederick Douglass’ narrative and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance”, I will discuss several details and points. These points will include Douglass’ adversity as a slave and Emerson’s journey in making sense of his life and self-identity. Also, in the discussion, I will add the similarities and differences between the thoughts of Douglass and Emerson on how each felt about their masters or Whites in general. These thoughts include Douglass’ reasoning of writing his autobiography, so that the reader it was intended for could understand why abolishing slavery was so important and Emerson’s hope that people would use their inner voice and learn to confront the issues on hand and not what others wanted to instill onto slaves.

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270 Words | 2 Pages

Douglass uses many rhetorical strategies here to make this paragraph sound almost poetic. He has personification through describing the sounds the animals make, metaphor in the line “She gropes her way, in the darkness of age...”, and his choice of diction allowed for words like “feet” and “meet” or “remains” and “things” to rhyme. He uses striking parallelism in the line “She stands- she sits- she staggers- she falls-

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197 Words | 1 Pages

Douglass and Lincoln were both raised and fated to be righteous men, when both had already come across obstacles through their own lives. Lincoln and Douglass were equivalents, even though they were far diverse men. Otherwise, both their lives grew in hardship, the independent men came to realize their lives are ideal (Oakes 90). Douglass and Lincoln both had strong perspective on labor morals and that people should gain the aids of their labor. In addition, both (Douglass and Lincoln) had beliefs that slavery was the world’s wrongdoing and should permanently diminished.

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1512 Words | 7 Pages

Frederick Douglass was an influential African American author, writing about the realities of African Americans stuck in slavery and the internal as well as external dilemmas they faced, capturing powerful messages within his works. With the sheer truth embedded in carefully written words on such a difficult topic to discuss, Douglass differentiates his work from the other African American writers of his time period. With the pursuit of the abolishment of slavery fueling Douglass’s works, his work The Heroic Slave advocates for unification and selflessness in order for slaves to successfully rebel. Examples of how poorly slaves were treated and their rights for better, much deserved conditions are displayed throughout the written piece to try

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575 Words | 3 Pages

Our first reading of EN101, Fredrick Douglass’ “Learning to Read,” helped our class to better understand the privilege of being a writer. Douglass lives in Hugh Auld’s household for roughly seven years. During this time, he is able to learn how to read and write, though Mrs. Auld is hardened and no longer tutors him. Slavery hurts Mrs. Auld as much as it hurts Douglass himself. The mentality of slavery strips her of her inherent sympathy for others, making her hardened and cruel.

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93 Words | 1 Pages

This passage appears in Frederick Douglass’s autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Douglass narrates his disgust with slavery and more specifically how his grandmother was wrongfully treated and the overall ingratitude slave-owners had toward her. Douglas explains how although his Grandmother cared so much for everyone else all through her life yet she got nothing but torture in return. In the end she is left alone with just loneliness of what then were distant memories of her family which had been ruined through the malicious acts of

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591 Words | 3 Pages

Because of the statuses of each person who attends Douglass’ school, they have a common ground to discuss with each other. Although Douglass is not technically a slave like most of the others learning from him, he still is in the lowest social tier and African American. Because of their corresponding similarities, the slaves and Douglass bond over their hardships while understanding what the others are going through. It is easy to sympathize with each other because they are in the same situation. During the time period this was written, society purposely made African American slaves feel like they didn’t belong and like they were outcasts.

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1022 Words | 5 Pages

The author is the most important individual in creating and directing the story and content of the book. The writer creates the whole purpose and can include any style that he or she would want. Books such as the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and The Awakening represent these with both similarities and differences between each other. The two authors share some similarities in their work, although the differences are more present and are very effective in making a story in their genres. This differences are point of view, writing style and ending, while the goals and chapter are similar between both books.

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553 Words | 3 Pages

In his Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Frederick Douglass describes in vivid detail his experiences of being a slave. In his novel Douglass talks about what it was like to move from location to location and what it was like to work long, hard hours with less than substantial sustenance. Eventually he escapes the clutches of slavery but not before he endured beatings, forced hard labor and emotional mistreatment. During his time as a slave he was tasked with various kinds of work and after he became free he worked as a speaker who advocated for abolition of slavery.

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561 Words | 3 Pages

To show his perception on the very cruel slaveholders, Douglass uses a multitude of adjectives to create an image in his reader’s mind, while also using metaphors to better comprehend the situation. For example, Douglass stated, “No words, no tears, no prayers, for his gory victim, seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose.” By using this metaphor, Frederick Douglass made the reader question how one could be so cruel to another human being. By visualizing one whipping another without any guilt, it makes the audience understand the inhumanity of slavery. In total, this metaphor creates a agonizing image in the reader’s

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322 Words | 2 Pages

Never giving up and never accepting defeat is what it means to be indefatigable. Frederick Douglass is a prime example of someone who is indefatigable. Despite his hardships Frederick Douglass never gave up. Indefatigability defines My Bondage and My Freedom because Douglass never accepted defeat in his goal to learn to read.

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1404 Words | 6 Pages

Again, Beatty uses tongue-in-cheek humor to call out popular beliefs and claims that it will become a forgotten, fragmented and fractured idea, until someone deems it helpful to revive and reuse, and the same had happened to Dickens. Here, Beatty expresses the profundity of the nature of racism and breaks stereotypes by abnegating the presence of conventional stereotypes.

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1546 Words | 7 Pages

Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born in 1818 a runaway slave, a supporter of women 's rights, and probably the most prominent abolitionist and human rights leader of the nineteenth century. Douglass favored the use of political tactics to work for abolition. During the Civil War, he offer a suggestion to President Lincoln to let former slaves fight for the North, and helped organize two black regiments in Massachusetts. Douglass was committed to make the war a direct confrontation with slavery. A literate runaway slave, Douglass began his speaking career in 1841, when he delivered some extemporaneous remarks on his experiences under slavery at a Massachusetts antislavery convention.

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887 Words | 4 Pages

Langston Hughes uses images of oppression to reveal a deeper truth about the way minorities have been treated in America. He uses his poems to bring into question some of Walt Whitman’s poems that indirectly state that all things are great, that all persons are one people in America, which Hughes claims is false because of all the racist views and oppression that people face from the people America. This oppression is then used to keep the minorities from Walt Whitman in his poem, “Song of Myself”, talks about the connection between all people, how we are family and are brothers and sisters who all share common bonds. He says, “ And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,/ And that all the men ever born are also my brothers,

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