Frederick Douglass Zeugma

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The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass addresses an intensely problematic issue the South had been facing for decades: slavery. He was one of the few slaves who could read and write, which allowed him to be able to write his book. The main reason Douglass wrote the book was to educate people from the North about how slaves were being treated in the South and to attempt to have slavery abolished. Douglass uses his personal stories as a slave to make a persuasive case against slavery. In order to make his book persuade people in the North against slavery he, used many syntactical devices. Douglass used a zeugma, “I was broken in the body, soul, and spirit” (38 Douglass), to emphasize the impact of slavery on him. This zeugma uses the