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

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“What to the Slave is the Fourth of July,” a speech given by Frederick Douglass, is full of rhetorical devices and strategies used to interest the audience and to reinforce the points that Douglass wants to make. Many great speakers were common people: slaves, moms, dads, teachers, and strangers. In contrast, most famous speeches that are made today are given by celebrities and those with large followings. Douglass, however, had to prove himself each time he made a speech; he did not have a large fanbase that was ready to sit through each speech he gave. Because only the best would help him succeed, Douglass was unable to give a second rate speech that would interest few in the audience. Therefore, Douglass incorporates strong uses of pathos, tone, and imagery in order to peak the interest in the speech that he was giving. …show more content…

It is one thing to study and topic and regurgitate it back out in your own words, but when you have experience with what you are sharing, your speech has a connection to you that is greater than any book you read could bring you. Douglass definitely knows where he has been and what he has done: lively in the south, being a slave, being brutally beaten; and he knows that he must use these in his speech to seem believable. Douglass proclaims that through blind prejudice, Douglass is inferior and a brute. What makes this so? The impeccable speaker argues, with words such as tyrants, vanity, heartless and vain, that the American people are oblivious. What better way to do this than with such deeply felts words of emotion, true feeling, and ultimately

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By appealing to the emotions of the reader, Frederick Douglass can build his argument of how awful slavery was and how the slave owners used Christianity to justify what they did. In the book, Narrative of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, the author uses his language to bring meaning to what he is writing. He creates an emotional connection to the reader using pathos, and builds his argument using the credibility of others, using ethos. In his book he uses his words to prove his argument to the reader of how the slave owners would use Christianity to justify slavery and violence, and how slavery affected everyone who was

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In 1776, on July 4th, the 13 English colonies officially declared their freedom from England. However, as the years progressed, slavery became incorporated into everyday American life. In 1852, former slave Frederick Douglass gave a speech to celebrate America’s independence; however, instead of praising the country, he censured Americans for saying they were a “country of the free”. In the speech, Hypocrisy of American Slavery, Frederick Douglass declares that Americans should not be celebrating their freedom when there are slaves living in the country. To convince his audience that Americans are wrong celebrating freedom on the 4th of July when slavery exists in their country, he uses emotional appeal, ethical appeal, and rhetorical questions.

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He questions his audience of the significance of Independence Day to slaves, and he answers it in an extremely contrasting way: “your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; … your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery,” that the celebration is “a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.” Douglass dismisses the national pride, characterizing it as a mere expression of people’s ignorance. The antithesis, with “greatness” being “vanity,” “sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless,” and “shouts of liberty and equality” being “hollow mockery,” provokes shock and anger from the audience, who have just been part of it and are now degraded as “savages.” However, Douglass was not trying to be inflammatory but provocative, witnessing the pathetic enthusiasm in the anniversary, that people feel exuberant about themselves while ignoring the saddening

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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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Douglass demonstrates pathos by the story he had told regarding to the mother and daughter. According to Douglass 's speech and how he express the

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When most people hear the words “Fourth of July” they think about fireworks, cookouts, and sparklers. During the 1850’s, the Fourth of July served as a reminder of the many horrors and injustices in the world. On July 4, 1852, Frederick Douglass-- a former American slave, abolitionist leader and adroit speaker-- spoke in Rochester, New York about the affectation of celebrating independence. In his speech, “The Hypocrisy of American Slavery”, he claims celebrating independence is unethical when slavery is widespread. To convince the reader of his claim, he uses rhetorical questions, emotional appeal, and antithesis in hopes of shedding light and sparking action on the wrongful situation.

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Throughout Douglass's speech, he exceeds expectations by adding excellent examples of ethos, pathos, and unique tone. These examples help the audience see his viewpoints and helps him connect with them. The literary devices used in his speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”, aided in his fight against

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“The Hypocrisy of American Slavery: Slavery at its best” Frederick Douglass an activist for anti racism and also an abolitionist’s speech “The Hypocrisy of Slavery” was given on the occasion of celebrating the independence day. Here, in this speech he actually brought out some questions like why we should celebrate Independence Day while almost four million people were kept chained as a slave. He actually mocked the fact of the people of America’s double standards which is that they are singing out the song of liberty, on the other hand holding the chain of slavery. Frederick Douglass, a former American-African slave who managed to escape from his slavery and later on became an abolitionist gave this speech on Fourth of July,

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What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? Throughout his sermon, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July, Fredrick Douglass devotedly argued that to the slave and even the liberated African American, the Fourth of July was nothing more than a holiday of a mockery of the crudest kind. Through his use of several rhetorical devices and strategies, Douglass conveyed his perspective on the concerning matter as if he were the voice of the still enslaved, both physically and logically. Prevalently, he presented an effectively argued point using ethos, logos, and pathos through credible appeals, convincing facts and statistics, and by successfully employing emotional appeals.

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He truly tapped into the reader’s emotions to allow them a deeper connection with the story. To see the way that the slaveholder would dehumanize the slave to the point of seeing the slave as just a piece of property was truly heartbreaking. It was at moments such as this that the reader saw a glimpse of the mood, tone and theme. Douglass makes clear his tone of understanding, the theme of both the slave and the slaveholder being affected, and the mood of the reader being

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In 1776, on July 4th, the 13 English colonies officially declared their freedom from England. However, as the years progressed, slavery became incorporated into everyday American life. In 1852, Frederick Douglass, a former slave, was called upon to deliver a speech to celebrate America’s independence; however, he censured Americans for saying they were a “country of the free”. In the speech, Hypocrisy of American Slavery, Frederick Douglass declares that Americans should not be celebrating their freedom when there are slaves living in the country. He uses emotional appeal, ethical appeal, and rhetorical questions to convince his audience that Americans are wrong celebrating freedom on the 4th of July when slavery exists in their country.

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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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PAGE 2 In the Narrative Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass, he uses this text to explain his purpose in “throwing light on the American slave system”, or show it for what it really is, as well as show his position on how he strongly believes slavery is an issue that needs to be addressed and how it differs from those who defended slavery, with experiences from his own life to support his argument. Douglass uses experience from his early days as a young slave to throw light on the aspect of physical abuse. According to his narrative, Douglass states, “Master, however, was not a humane slaveholder.

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He uses metaphors and antithesis within to strengthen that connection. Through this Frederick Douglass appeals to the minds of the sympathetic

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Frederick Douglass writes his narrative to educate the reader on the horrors of southern slavery. Douglass writes with the purpose of turning the reader against slavery and fight for abolishment. Throughout Frederick Douglass’s narrative he crafts figurative language such as imagery, repetition, and similes to shed light on the horrors of slavery and to get people to fight against slavery. To give the reader a detailed picture Frederick Douglass utilizes imagery. Douglass uses imagery in great detail when describing the beating of Aunt Hester, Before he commenced whipping Aunt Hester, he took her into the kitchen, and stripped her from neck to waist, leaving her neck, shoulders, and back, entirely naked.

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