Rhetorical Strategies In The Life Of A Slave Girl

In The Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Ann Jacobs chronicles her live as a slave. During this time, she would spend much of her time hiding in an attic compartment, with a small hole that let her look outside. In her writing, Jacobs uses many rhetorical strategies to communicate her ideas, and keeps the reader interested using her language and pacing.

In the passage, Jacobs describes how she spends her days on the plantation. To describe this, Jacobs uses heavily detailed descriptions to make help the reader experience life as she did. This imagery paints a picture of the conditions Jacobs suffered—the feeling of claustrophobia, the stifled environment, and the ever-present fear of death. Jacobs also describes why she spent time in this uncomfortable environment:

Slavery places the slave in the worst of situations—there is no freedom, and it feels like there is no escape. Similarly, Jacobs describes her attic compartment as restrictive, stating, “I longed to draw in a plentiful draught of fresh air, to stretch my cramped limbs, to have room to stand erect, to feel the earth under my feet again.” In addition, Jacobs discusses how she would look outside of her Hobbit hole and distract herself with the outside world. This is parallel to how Jacobs’ relatives would distract themselves with the idea of escape.

At the fourth paragraph, Jacobs changes her tone considerably. Previously, Jacobs was describing the mild discomforts of slavery, and her compartment. However, she changes to describing how brutal other slaves have it. Jacobs describes the separation of families, the brutal beatings slaves would endure, and how some slaves felt death was a better fate than bondage. She also describes how slave masters did nothing to improve the lives of slaves, often thinking of it as a “great moral, social, and political blessing; a blessing to the master, and a blessing to the