Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass Rhetorical Analysis

686 Words3 Pages

Fredrick Douglas became a proclaimed writer, speaker, and activist in the time leading up to the civil war. He was born a slave, taught himself to read and write, escaped the horrors of slavery. He developed a hatred for slavery and inequality when he was a young child. When he became more aware and learned more about the world and became a feminist supporting issues of suffrage and was one of the few men that attended the legendary Seneca Falls Convention. He spoke about women’s suffrage that his own captivity inspired. Fredrick Douglass generated opinions throughput Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, an American Slave and these inclinations became stronger for a broader group of people in the speech “I am a Radical Women’s Rights …show more content…

He was one of the few educated slaves that began to look at the situation and see the changes that could be made to improve it. He was distraught about the aspects of his life that no one could tell him. He never knew his age and this vexed him because it was a fundamental fact in white society. “The white children could tell their ages. I could not tell why I ought to be deprived of the same privilege.” (Douglass 1) He realized his own misfortunes about his birthright of being an African American and is able to be more passionate about it. Although an aspect of your birth date is somewhat unimportant, it was able to give Douglass a way to get fired up about matters facing him and his race. Douglass wanted to enact on these opinions and create change. He did this by running away and achieve American revolutionary, Patrick Henry’s legendary ideal, liberty or death. “In coming to a fixed determination to run away, we did more than Patrick Henry, when he resolved upon liberty or death. With us it was a doubtful liberty at most, and almost certain death if we failed. For my part, I should prefer death to hopeless bondage.” (Douglass 74) Because this controversy was affecting him he was able to ensure that he would obtain liberty because there was no other way for him to continue being a