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Rhetorical Analysis Of Speech By Frederick Douglass

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On July 5th, 1852, blacks and whites are in the midst of a battle for justice as blacks are enslaved. Blacks face adversity and many injustices from the whites in a supposed free country. Douglass addresses the people of America and acknowledges the inequalities between the people. Douglass voices the blacks opinion on their enslavement and the unlawful prejudice they encounter in their everyday lives. He delivers a remarkably powerful speech that reminds the people of the foundations and morals that the United States was built on such as freedom and happiness. He begins to talk about the fathers of the US and how their revolution was built on the government's oppression and unjust actions. Douglass seeks to appeal to the whites, and create …show more content…

He uses a forceful and straightforward tone to be direct toward the audience so they view his argument as significant. Douglass is forthright and direct in his speech as he desperately tries to persuade the government while also painting an image of what would happen if nothing changes. When Douglass begins talking about slaves as a whole and the injustices they face, he often describes in detail the suffering they have endured. This is evident when Douglass says the slaves utter a “Mournful wail of millions” (Douglass 11). Douglass notes that the slaves are longing for freedom, but nobody seems hears their sorrowful moans or sees their miserable visages. Douglass then continues to scorn and denounce America, criticizing the path that she will follow. He believes America is untrue to herself, saying: “America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future” (Douglass 7). Douglass truly believes that America will encounter dark times unless a lasting and memorable change is made to acknowledge slave rights. He also believes that there is no excuse for what has transpired as he shuns America and its treatment of the black community. Douglass asks a rhetorical question about unfair treatment of slaves, and responds saying, “I will not equivocate. I will not excuse” (Douglass 8). Douglass uses a candid tone to show that America and its people have no excuse for the villainous and heinous crimes they have committed against the slaves. Douglass uses an honest and blunt tone to get his point across while also using detailed imagery to support his strong

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I feel that Grimké 's main purpose when writing her article was that she wanted to inform that we are not just a skin color and women are not just to seen and not heard that people of color and women are human and they have voices that need to be heard and rights that need to be met. I find Grimke very ahead of her time and t be raised in home with slave and look past that is remarkable. I feel Douglass main purpose from his speech was to call out Americans for what they were, hypocrites. He wanted Americans to show their true colors and admit the bias monster they have become who believed in freedom for all but only for the ones that look like them. Douglass as an escaped slave had the knowledge and the right to talk about the injustice and

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Both King and Douglass were advocating for the same thing: their constitutional sanction of freedom. Both men, in their respective letters touch upon parallel thoughts and beliefs that revolve around the much bigger topic of racial inequality and discrimination. Both men were discriminated against and they talk about their experiences and plight in their very distinctive yet special styles. Born in the year 1817, in an era of open and unashamed slave trade, Frederick Douglass’s story begins as a serf to Mrs. Hugh in the city of Maryland.

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Many of us take education for granted and don’t learn to our fullest potential, but Fredrick Douglass soaked in every piece of information up because he knew it was his way out. “Learning to Read and Write” is a famous article based on what Fredrick Douglass went through to earn a valuable education while being enslaved. Author Fredrick Douglass, wrote “Learning to Read and Write”, published in 1845. Throughout the article, he takes us through different events he goes through while being enslaved. Douglass begins building his credibility with personal facts and successfully demonstrating logic and pathos appeal.

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Frederick Douglass, born a slave and later the most influential African American leader of the 1800s, addresses the hypocrisy of the US of maintaining slavery with its upheld ideals being freedom and independence on July 4th, 1852. Douglass builds his argument by using surprising contrasts, plain facts, and provocative antithesis. Introducing his subject, Douglass reminds his audience about the dark side of America for slaves, in sharp, surprising contrasts with the apparent progressivity within the nation. He first notices “the disparity,” that “the sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and deaths to me,” as an African-American former slave. It is surprising for the audience to hear that the Sun does not bring him any prosperity, that the Sun, the source of life on earth, brings him destruction.

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‘’ No words, No tears, No prayers, from his glory victim, seemed to move his iron heart fro his bloody purpose.’’ (page 5). Douglass appeals to the mournful emotions of the audience by expressing how the overseers gave no mercy or cared about the effect of whippings to the slaves. Douglass use of parallelism displayed how slavery was

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Douglass claimed that although slavery was abolished, blacks were living under a different kind of slavery after the Civil war. Discrimination and racism was prominent and there were few laws enforced. “So long as discriminatory laws ensured defacto white control over Southern blacks, then ‘slavery by yet another name’ persisted. ‘Slavery is not abolished,’ he contended, ‘until the black man has the ballot’ with which to defend his interests and freedom.” (Howard-Pitney 485).

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In “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, Douglass narrates in detail the oppressions he went through as a slave before winning his freedom. In the narrative, Douglass gives a picture about the humiliation, brutality, and pain that slaves go through. We can evidently see that Douglass does not want to describe only his life, but he uses his personal experiences and life story as a tool to rise against slavery. He uses his personal life story to argue against common myths that were used to justify the act of slavery. Douglass invalidated common justification for slavery like religion, economic argument and color with his life story through his experiences torture, separation, and illiteracy, and he urged for the end of slavery.

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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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The autobiography, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, written in 1845 in Massachusetts, narrates the evils of slavery through the point of view of Frederick Douglass. Frederick Douglass is a slave who focuses his attention into escaping the horrors of slavery. He articulates his mournful story to anyone and everyone, in hopes of disclosing the crimes that come with slavery. In doing so, Douglass uses many rhetorical strategies to make effective arguments against slavery. Frederick Douglass makes a point to demonstrate the deterioration slavery yields from moral, benevolent people into ruthless, cold-hearted people.

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Slavery is equally a mental and a physical prison. Frederick Douglass realized this follow-ing his time as both a slave and a fugitive slave. Douglass was born into slavery because of his mother’s status as a slave. He had little to go off regarding his age and lineage. In the excerpt of the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

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Douglass tells about his own childhood and how his father might have been a slaveholder. He explains

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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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he uses bold words and biting criticism to call attention to the gross injustices and hypocrisy of slavery in the United States. In the opening remarks of his speech, Douglas provides heart-wrenching descriptions to pull his audience into the lives of their fellow

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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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