Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass Rhetorical Analysis

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is an autobiography written in 1845 on his account of the experiences as an African American slave and the prejudices experienced to demonstrate social influence for the abolitionist movement. His story accounts his involvement as a child on a plantation, and then his experiences moving into the city until attaining freedom within the North. These experiences were often used as social rhetoric by Douglass to appeal towards a southern society who are inherently prejudice and to gain movement for abolitionism, which was at its basis of infrastructure. As such, this essay analyzes the rhetoric through a specific passage on its word modulation which allows for structural composition open to various

The dictionary explains the definition of trump being to “Beat (someone or something) by saying or doing something better” (“Trump”). It becomes clear Douglass used the word trump to demonstrate his achievement in overcoming illiteracy as a slave, a rare occurrence for African Americans due to available resources during this time. Douglass likely embedded this word into the paragraph due to its connotation which serves as double context for the remaining sentences. The first use of the term can be fully assessed in analogy to a deck of cards, where Douglass, a prominent card, had triumphed over the opposing forces of the other suit, which in this context is the Southerners and segregators. This is quite important because the chances of trumping all opposing cards in the segregator suit is minor, usually odds of one in fifty-two in this context. This given allegory demonstrates to the reader the odds Douglass had to achieve to become a working level of literacy in comparison to the whites; the primary objective Douglass wanted to achieve when writing about his experience was to appeal to whites through demonstrating the opposing forces. The second use of the term was to use composition of the introduction sentence where usage of trump would foreshadow the following sentences with a level of transparency that is not explicit. It allows the reader to understand Douglass overcame something while giving enough room for the following sentences to reveal his