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Juxtaposition In Frederick Douglass

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Through juxtaposition and diction, Frederick Douglass intensifies his urge for freedom and symbolizes the ships and bay as his escape. By employing descriptive diction, Frederick Douglass creates an image for the reader that highlights the ship's importance. Douglass had mixed feelings about what impact the ship had on him. He imaged the ships with their “beautiful vessels, robed in purest white” exemplifying how eye-catching they are, yet the ship's beauty “[to him they] were so many shrouded ghosts, to terrify and torment”. This imagery gives the reader a precise picture of what he sees and illustrates how the ships haunt him through the beautiful sea. The bay being flooded with ships strengthened the meaning they had for him. Douglass drew …show more content…

Douglass associates the white sails with angels to implicate a sense of spiritualism. This slight religious diction brings hope into his narrative. The angelic ships would carry him to freedom with the help of God. Through the ship's imagery, his urge and motivation for freedom grow and continue to symbolize it as his way to freedom, the very freedom that comes with spirituality. Using juxtaposition, Douglass contrasts the ship's freedom with his bondage which illustrates his jealousy and despair of liberty. The ships provide Douglass with a sickening feeling. The ships force him to understand his condition and how he is forever tied there, wishing to be as free as the ships one day. He knew the truth that “[they] move merrily before the gentle gale, [while he] before the bloody whip”! He sets a jealous tone knowing “They [were] loosened from [their] moorings, and are free; [yet he is] fast in [his] chains and are a slave”. Douglass constantly highlights their difference in freedom. He wanted what the ship had. It intensifies his urge to leave because he, who is a man, has less freedom than an inanimate object. It just wasn't fair. Through his jealousy, it gives him a glimpse of

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Douglass’s descriptions of the slave trade were extremely vivid, from the details of how American’s viewed slaves, to the sounds of whips cracking and how a woman was encumbered by the weight of the child she carried and the chains that she wore. These details would bring readers to know what it was like to be in a slaves shoes at that time. His speech is driven by first had accounts of the degradations of slavery and would not be credible if it wasn’t for this fact. I believe that Douglass’s tone throughout the speech was hopeful, he enforced the cause of the Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society with the hopes of making the United States more complete when slavery ended.

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555 Words | 3 Pages

In the passage, Frederick Douglass speaks about the particulars of his state of mind as an escaped slave, a fugitive, in 1830’s New York. Throughout the passage, Douglass comprehensively uses similes and metaphors, as well as tone shifts, and repetition, to fully impart unto the reader his not only elation at being free but also his fears, exhaustion and his anxiety towards trusting people. This garners both empathy and understanding from his audience. Douglass opens the passage by describing parts of his escape to New York, comparing his elation to that of a “mariner . . .

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1613 Words | 7 Pages

After eavesdropping on his white owner as to why education was forbidden for slaves, Douglass came to a shocking realization. “These words sank deep into my heart, stirred up sentiments…, and called into existence an entirely new train of thought… I now understood… the white man’s power to enslave the black man… From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom.” The imagery in this excerpt helps discuss how deeply the words affected Douglass and how, in turn, these words allowed him to come to the most life-changing moment of his life.

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605 Words | 3 Pages

Frederick Douglass uses imagery, figurative language and descriptions to present his audience with the best first person description possible. Douglass is a powerful and inspiring writer, through his use of personal anecdotes in the start of the passage and his potent and compelling negative language, intense poem, and analogy in the middle and slam ending of imagery. Which all conveys that life as a slave will always seem miserable and even the best slaves are still treated poorly. Douglass wants to share that there is no way to live a

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943 Words | 4 Pages

"From this time I understood the words abolition and abolitionist, and always drew near when that word was spoken, expecting to hear something of importance to myself and fellow slaves. The light broke in upon me by degrees." Douglass learns of what the word abolitionist means and this instills in him some hope that one day he may be free. We see through imagery and emotion that Douglass is finiding hope that the more people become educated, that

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1127 Words | 5 Pages

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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431 Words | 2 Pages

A notable aspect of this passage is Douglass’s employment of analogy to express his thoughts. In one phrase (sentence 8), he compares his experience to a mariner rescued from a pirate, emphasizing his great relief and excitement at escaping enslavement. The comparison helps the reader comprehend the depth of Douglass’s feelings and the magnitude of his achievement. In others, he compares himself to a hunted animal (sentences 9, 15, 19, 20), underlining the danger he faced as a fugitive, and the vigilance required to avoid recapture. This parallel provides a sense of tension that calls attention to Douglass’s vulnerable situation.

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648 Words | 3 Pages

‘’ The head, neck, and shoulders of Mary were literally cut to pieces.’’ (page 38). Douglass appeals to the audience by using imagery in a visualizing way, to give the audience a way to imagine it in their head, to see the hurtful things that went on. The use of imagery from Douglass displayed how slavery was heartbroken. Along with paradox and imagery Douglass uses parallelism to describe how slavery was inhuman by expressing how slaves was frequently whipped.

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419 Words | 2 Pages

On July 4th, 1952, Frederick Douglass delivered a powerful speech in Rochester, New York. He carefully crafted an argument aimed at persuading his audience that the United States must abolish slavery. Douglass strategically focused on highlighting the faults of American slavery, and in doing so, he uses important features such as vivid imagery, emotional appeals, and historical references to build a powerful case for the urgent need to end slavery. One of the most relevant features of Douglas's argument is the use of the imagery. Throughout the speech, he explains a well-focused picture of the brutality faced by enslaved individuals.

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633 Words | 3 Pages

It recalled the departed self-confidence, and inspired me again with a determination to be free” (ch. X). This battle with Covey marks a turning point for Douglass because it reignited the hope he once had and reintroduced to him a sense of strength he thought he had lost. In Douglass’s earlier years as a slave, he held a more optimistic outlook on his situation.

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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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436 Words | 2 Pages

After spending much time with the Auld family, Douglass went to work for a new slave owner named Covey. Covey was known to break enslaved peoples’ spirits so they can be a “good” slave. The new owner did just that. All of Douglass’s hope to escape to freedom was gone. “My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed…”(Pg.18 E.4)

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935 Words | 4 Pages

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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257 Words | 2 Pages

With this, Douglass is addressing the topic of slavery and whether to abolish it or not. And goes about telling the hardships he went through.

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676 Words | 3 Pages

How Freud 's Theory has Impacted my Life and Those Around me “The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water”(Freud). The preceding quote was stated by Sigmund Freud, an Austrian neurologists that focused much of his work on explaining how the unconscious impacts human behavior. As well as, he was the founder of psychoanalysis, which he defined as “the treatment of mental disorders using an innovative procedure... it required lengthy verbal interactions with patients during which Freud probed deeply into their lives” (Weiten 382). With that said, I am going to explain how many of Freud 's theories can be seen throughout my own life.

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