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Rhetorical Analysis Of What To The Slave Is The Fourth Of July

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Frederick Douglass was a successful abolitionist responsible for giving the famously stimulating speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” Embedded within this speech were multiple rhetorical strategies such as parallelism, antithesis, and rhetorical questions; all of which contributed to the overall exemplary writing. Parallelism made his sentences more powerful; it emphasized his argument by using the same structure. When Douglass harmonized his verbal arrangements, it added venom in his words and drama to the speech. He wanted passion so that the audience took him seriously and paid attention to his words. “When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the Antithesis, like parallelism, has a great impact on writing. It allows the writer to distinguish differences in all aspects: characteristics, opinions, and many other ideas. “To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and …show more content…

This literary device is most often used to interrogate or clarify the audience’s opinions. They might influence the audience to favor the writer’s opinion. “For who is there so cold that a nation’s sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish, that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation’s jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs?” These rhetorical questions make the audience think about their own views and what they feel is

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To begin, he uses emotional appeal to create powerful imagery to persuade the reader that celebrating freedom is wrong when slavery still exists. He announces, “fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are today rendered more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that reach them” (para. 4). By creating a picture in the audience’s mind of other people’s cries of freedom deriding slaves, they begin to feel ashamed for being so cheerful while African Americans have no liberty. The readers have recognized that they are being hypocrites by supporting slavery while boasting about their freedom as a country, which leads them to begin wanting to

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What to the Slave is the Fourth of July Introduction The 4th of July is an important day in American history it represents freedom and is usually associated with fireworks, parades, alcohol, and concerts. Those activities more or less represent today’s culture. When Fredrick Douglass made his speech he talked about American values such as liberty, citizenship, and freedom. The irony of this speech was that at the time white Americans in the south were still participating in slave trading.

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Freedom is the primary ideal upon which America was founded. It is the tenet most cherished by the original colonists; it is a pillar upon which they built the new government. However, freedom was denied to a large part of America's citizens for a long time. Frederick Douglas was one of the greatest activists for African-American freedom of the 19th century; he used literary works and speeches, instead of violence, to achieve his goals. In his piece "What, to the Slave, is the Fourth of July?"

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