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How Does Frederick Douglass Use Direct Language

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For years, the institution of slavery existed in the United States and was characterized by the legal, inhumane treatment of those enslaved. One of the most prominent figures during this time was Frederick Douglass, an African-American abolitionist who detailed his own experiences in the practice. Having spent most of his life enslaved and wishing to escape, when he finally did he would find himself in a new and overwhelming situation. In this excerpt of his autobiography, “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,” he describes his life after escaping slavery and shows how his state of mind goes from being enthusiastic over freedom to suddenly fearful and lonely. To convey his change, Douglass uses deliberate language, such as various …show more content…

The first emotion he describes as having is “the highest excitement,” (13) which he states is still an insufficient description. To elaborate on the feeling, he compares it to “as one may imagine the unarmed mariner to feel when he is rescued by a friendly man-of-war” (14-15). Since Douglass believes it is not enough to simply describe his state of mind at the time as excited, he decides to include the simile because he believes the readers would be able to understand him better. Due to this method, the reader is able to—for at least a moment—consider how a mariner would feel in that situation and therefore, they would better understand how happy Douglass felt from their interpretation. However, Douglass’ enthusiasm is described as short-lived because he was soon to be struck by feelings of fear. As he further assesses what freedom means, Douglass’ negative feelings arise from the citizens of New York and compare these inhabitants of the “strange land” …show more content…

While describing his escape and life after, Douglass uses strong words to depict the horrors of slavery to support his later feelings. One example of this specific diction is when he uses the words “wretchedness” (1) and “tortures” (22) to directly describe the enslavement. By using these words, Douglass not only establishes his hatred of slavery, but it helps to explain why at first he felt excited to be free and also why his feelings develop into fear eventually. After living in cruel conditions for so long, Douglass could not help but look forward to what was ahead of him, until he realized he had to always protect himself from going back to what he left. Additionally, Douglass includes many words to suggest the difficulties a fugitive slave might encounter. Some of which are “helpless” (58) and “painful” (37), and he uses these words to convey the general condition of being a fugitive and his feelings of futility over the status. To be more specific on why he feels those strong emotions, he includes descriptions of obstacles fugitive slaves would have to overcome, such as the “gnawings of hunger” (53) and the “total darkness as to what to do, where to go and where to stay” (49-50). As explained earlier, Douglass believes that he has no allies in either white men or black men, so he instead views them all as enemies and threats. Due to feeling this way, he is left to

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In Frederick Douglass’ passage written in to take place in New York in 1838, he uses emotion, and literary devices to convey his state of mind. He starts with persuading the reader to imagine the complexity of being a victim to slavery and escaping. With a cheerful emersion from the deeps of slavery to the openness of freedom. “I felt like one who had escaped a den of hungry lions”. “I felt as one may imagen an unarmed mariner”.

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Frederick Douglass uses diction to express that the emotions of being free are equally as taxing as the emotions he experienced while he was a slave. He says that being free was the highest excitement he ever felt even though the answer does not satisfy him. By contradicting himself he seems to want to show that an answer to the question of how he felt in a free state is as inexplicable how it felt to be a slave. He later states that one must just experience or imagine themselves in a similar situation to understand his emotions. He compares escaping slavery to escaping a ‘’den of hungry tigers,’’ but the relief is shortly lived because loneliness consumes him.

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Douglass describes the ships he sees on the Chesapeake Bay as moving “merrily before the gentle gale” and himself as “[sad] before the bloody whip.” By juxtaposing “merrily” and “sadly,” two completely opposing concepts, he displays that he is coming to a better understanding of how horrible his plight is in the context of the rest of society. The imagery of “the gentle gale,” a seemingly comforting concept, stands in stark contrast to “the bloody whip,” with its connotation of pain and great suffering, which further demonstrates Douglass’ recognition that his situation is different. Towards the end of the passage, Douglass contrasts his “misery in slavery” to “happiness when [he becomes] free.” By associating misery with his current state of captivity and placing it in close proximity to the happiness he would feel if he were liberated, a sense of desperation from Douglass to escape from slavery becomes evident.

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Frederick Douglass’s Hope for Freedom Hope and fear, two contradictory emotions that influence us all, convicted Frederick Douglass to choose life over death, light over darkness, and freedom over sin. Douglass, in Chapter ten, pages thirty-seven through thirty-nine, of the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, utilizes various rhetorical techniques and tone shifts to convey his desperation to find hope in this time of misery and suffering. Mr. Covey, who Douglass has been sent to by his master to be broken, has succeeded in nearly tearing all of Douglass’s dreams of freedom away from him. To expound on his desires to escape, Douglass presents boats as something that induces joy to most but compels slaves to feel terror. Given the multiple uses of repetition, antithesis, indirect tone shifts, and various other rhetorical techniques, we can see Douglass relaying to his audience the hardships of slavery through ethos, the disheartening times that slavery brings, and his breakthrough of determination to obtain freedom.

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Douglass empathizes with other slaves, and their morbid conditions and lack of affection has made the community family, because of this Douglass is determined to devote his life to promote the abolitionist movement. When expressing gratitude towards being translated to the plantations in Baltimore, Douglas projects he is very true to himself when he recites, “I prefer to be true to myself, even at incurring the ridicule of others than to be false and incur my own abhorrence.” Pg.45 This justifies Douglas’ determination and desire to remove slavery which consumed him. It became an obsession, something he was going to put everything in his power to achieve.

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In Frederick Douglass’s book, he writes accounts of his time in slavery and beyond. Throughout the book, Douglass writes about not only the physical hardships slaves endured, but the mental and emotional hardships as well. In Chapter X, Douglass describes a battle he had with a temporary slave owner named Mr. Covey. After the fight concludes, Douglass writes, “This battle with Mr. Covey was the turning point in my career as a slave. It rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a sense of my own manhood.

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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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An American Slave,” Douglass discusses the horrors of being enslaved and a fugitive slave. Through Douglass’s use of figurative language, diction and repetition he emphasizes the cruelty he experiences thus allowing readers to under-stand his feelings of happiness, fear and isolation upon escaping slavery. Figurative language allocates emotions such as excitement, dread and seclusion. As a slave you have no rights, identity or home. Escaping slavery is the only hope of establishing a sense of self and humanity.

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The Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass shows the imbalance of power between slaves and their masters. In his book, Douglass proves that slavery is a destructive force not only to the slaves, but also for the slaveholders. “Poison of the irresponsible power” that masters have upon their slaves that are dehumanizing and shameless, have changed the masters themselves and their morality(Douglass 39). This amount of power and control in contact with one man breaks the kindest heart and the purest thoughts turning the person evil and corrupt. Douglass uses flashbacks that illustrate the emotions that declare the negative effects of slavery.

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“One who is a slaveholder at heart never recognizes a human being in a slave” (Angelina Grimke). This quote was created to show the effect that slavery had on not only the slave, but the slaveholder. The slaveholder would dehumanize the slave to the point where the human was no longer recognizable; instead, the slave was property. Throughout this autobiography, Frederick Douglass uses language to portray the similarities and differences between the two sides. He allows the reader to spend a day in the life of a slave to see the effects from it.

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First, Douglass utilizes figures of speech with similes to make his feelings more accessible to the reader. He states “I said I felt like one who had escaped a den of hungry lions.” This shows that Frederick was relieved that he finally escaped slavery. He was finally out of the evil and sad world.

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Douglass encountered multiple harsh realities of being enslaved. For example, the ex-slave was practically starved to death by his masters on multiple occasions. In fact, “[He was] allowed less than a half of a bushel of corn-meal per week, and very little else... It was not enough for [him] to subsist upon... A great many times [he had] been nearly perishing with hunger” (pg 31).

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Frederick Douglass Rhetorical Analysis Essay The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, written by Frederick Douglass himself, is a brutally honest portrayal of slavery’s dehumanizing capabilities. By clearly connecting with his audience’s emotions, Douglass uses numerous rhetorical devices, including anecdotes and irony, to argue the depravity of slavery. Douglass clearly uses anecdotes to support his argument against the immorality of slavery. He illustrates different aspects of slavery’s destructive nature by using accounts of not only his own life but others’ alsoas well.

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“With them, justice, liberty and humanity were “final”; not slavery and oppression.” This relates to the hardships and the fact that the people don’t recognize how terrible it is. And that these meanings of these “free” words mean something else to him and other slaves. He shows that the changes are hard but once they are made everything will be peaceful. Rhetorical features and strategies are Douglass’ forte’ in engaging with the audience.

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He uses similes throughout his narrative to compare his struggles with slavery and show how the African American is negatively portrayed with something the reader can easily imagine and relate. When discussing his tiresome days working , Douglass compares himself to being held down by a weight, When I could stand no longer, I fell, and felt as if held down by an immense weight.” (55) The simile between him and the weight shows how slavery is weighing him down and it is something the reader can easily imagine and relate too. Later in the narrative Douglass compares slaves to wild beasts, “In the midst of houses, yet having no home,--among fellow-men, yet feeling as if in the midst of wild beasts,” (90).

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