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The Song Of Life By Frederick Douglass Analysis

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I like how the author uses the songs the slaves signed to show their emotion. People who knew nothing of the slaves that listened to them sing, thought it was evidence of their "contentment and happiness" said Douglas. That was the greatest mistake a person could conceive. When in reality the slaves would sing when they were most unhappy. The songs were song to express their sorrows from experience singing was the only thing slaves could do to express their feeling at heart. Douglas said, the songs would depress his spirit and filled him with ineffable sadness. No one of the 20 century would every understand or relate to the pain that the slaves went through back then. It's unimaginable to think that the only way that I would be able to express the sadness in my heart would be to sing. Having no control of what you can do or say, really damages your emotions. When people usually feel a certain type of way in this century whether their …show more content…

How a person was treated with discuss because of the color of their skin. Or how a person would look forward to being killed? People should be appreciative about the things they have now, always be thankful. Putting myself in that type of situation would be like a guy trying to relate to a female giving birth. Its hard to relate to a person that spent their whole life being owned by another person. This narrative describes the years he was sold to one person to another, and the pain of having to go to see people he cared about be whipped and tortured. At times Douglas found himself regretting his own existence, and wishing himself dead, or wishing he was killed. A man that went through all his of suffering and still has hope of being free. He wrote about his life to share it with others, to not only say he understood the struggles of slavery but to say that his has as well went through the pains of

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266 Words | 2 Pages

By expressing passionate, but logical explanations of the wrong doings and persecution of Slavery, Douglas includes Pathos and Logos in his marvelous speech. Douglas mentions various forceful words to get the audience to understand his passion for the opposition of slavery, he quotes “But a still more inhuman, disgraceful, and scandalous state of things remains to be presented. By an act of the American Congress, not yet two years old, slavery has been nationalized in its most horrible and revolting form.” Douglas uses magnifying and strong words to connect the disrespect and cruelty that comes with slavery. He express his trouble passion towards slavery by stating vigorous and meaningful words that are associated with brutal actions.

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328 Words | 2 Pages

Frederick Douglass wrote this autobiography, which contains many personal anecdotes of his life during slavery and how it impacted him. Douglass portrays through this excerpt that it wasn’t easy to live as a slave. He tells his audience how he wanted to leave and be free from all the misery he had suffered and continued suffering. In this passage from his autobiography, Douglass uses rhetorical strategies such as anaphora and pathos to give the audience an insight of what slavery was like.

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666 Words | 3 Pages

This quote described how Douglas felt as being a slave. He felt as if his manhood had been taken away from him and that he was anything less than a human. Douglas had lost interest in the things he once loved such as education and knowledge. The physical, mental, and spiritual grasp of

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1480 Words | 6 Pages

To a younger Douglass as well as the masters the songs were seemingly incoherent and unintelligible. Many outsiders equated the slaves singing as a sign of their happiness. He indicates that the songs are, on a deeper level, an indication of the slaves deep unhappiness. Close-reading: Douglass mentions that ‘as a slave’ he did not even understand the true meaning of the song. While in slavery he did not delve into what the depth of the songs meant it was only with distance and recollection that he reached his conclusion.

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1787 Words | 8 Pages

In this narrative, Douglass describes a personal endeavor where he attempts to not only find a place for himself, but for every black man in America. In this narrative, Douglas is the actor, and the action is his attempt at reasoning his way to a common heritage with the American people. The time and place are de-emphasized in this narrative as brief generalities of being sometime in the past and occurring at a non-descript location. This is an intentional move by Douglass because it allows the emphasis to be placed on the manner and cause of the narrative which are two areas that carry greater rhetorical weight. The manner of his speech is one of an earnest and humble thinker who has been cast out from society through no fault of his own.

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238 Words | 1 Pages

Douglas fought against racism and slavery and furthermore he expressed his frustration against those, who did not allow and contributed with slaves ‘education. Douglas’ book has been written to the abolitionists and anyone else sympathetic to his movement. In this article, he provided his own prospective as a slave, his own experience

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1405 Words | 6 Pages

The Narrative of The Life of Frederick Douglass, An American slave takes a look at how it really feels like to be a slave. There is only so much you can learn about slavery in the textbooks. Often times we know what slavery is, but never really understand how brutal it was for the slaves. Douglas shares his experiences to help us learn how slaves exactly were treated. Douglass emphasizes his writing in a unique style to capture the audience, while also reeling in their emotions to embrace the experience of being a slave, and uses an effective tone to illustrate what being a slave feels like.

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1264 Words | 6 Pages

Douglass begins his description of slave songs by recounting the songs that were sang while slaves made the trip back and forth from the Great House Farm, “While on their way, they would make the dense old woods, for miles around, reverberate with their wild songs, revealing at once the highest joy and the deepest sadness” (Douglass 342). He depicts the large contrast of emotions that is contained within the songs. The illustration of the reverberation of the woods shows the strength of the sounds of the songs. He expands on the strength of music arguing that sometimes he believes that, “the mere hearing of those songs would do more to impress some minds with the horrible character of slavery, than the reading of whole volumes of philosophy on the subject could do” (Douglass 342). He acknowledges the power in the songs is much greater than the power within language.

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1568 Words | 7 Pages

His high level vocabulary made the book challenging, but it helped me understand and vividly imagine what the slaves went through during this time. Personally, the idea of reading about someone’s life was intimidating. I’ve never been the type of person to like autobiographies, and when I obtained the book I adjourned reading it because my mind set toward this book was that it was going to be tedious, and time consuming. As I started reading the book I became more enthralled in it, the way Douglas writes captures your attention. The part that made me want to keep reading was at the beginning when he intensely explains how his aunt had been whipped in front of him.

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468 Words | 2 Pages

In his book, A Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglas, the author Fredrick Douglas informs us, with firsthand accounts, the true ugliness of American slavery. Douglas illustrates the cruelty the African Americans endured through their birth, their growing to adulthood and of their death. Readers are left to wonder the feelings and thoughts of the African Americans during this horrific time, the time known as slavery. Beginning with the title, A narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglas, it identifies to the reader that the reading to is be focused primarily on the life of Fredrick Douglas. Upon reading, the reader is introduced to the birth of Mr. Douglas and like many slaves, was born into the world unknowing to the suffrage

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1689 Words | 7 Pages

He also re accounts how much of a beast Covey has turned him into, he thinks about killing Covey and himself. Douglass is struggling with being a slave, that he would rather escape through suicide. He mentions that hope for freedom and fear of God led him to stay alive still fighting for his freedom. He mentioned how southerners claimed they brought Christianity to slaves but it still didn’t prove that owning slaves was righteous.

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1072 Words | 5 Pages

The Song of the Abolitionist addresses the severity of slavery in the past. Its main aim was to encourage abolitionists to stand strong and protest against the advocation of slavery in the battle for freedom and liberty in the United States. It is set to the tune of Auld Lang Syne, a traditional folk song. However, in the 21st Century, although slavery is not as widespread as in the past, inequality is still prevalent around the world, be it racism or gender discrimination.

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1358 Words | 6 Pages

Abraham Lincoln, a Senate candidate at the time, gave his famous “A House Divided” speech on June 16, 1858, in Illinois at the Republican State Convention. When Lincoln delivered the speech his immediate audience was the Illinois Republican Party, but after reading the speech one can see that it was intended for a much larger audience. His speech was intended to impact people of both parties, and to change the way the people thought. During Lincoln’s speech, he had a few main ideas that he was clearly trying to illustrate to his audience.

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850 Words | 4 Pages

Education is the light at the end of the tunnel, when Frederick uses it he discovers hope. In the story the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick goes through many struggles on his path to freedom, showing us the road from slavery to freedom. At the beginning of the book, Douglass is a slave in both body and mind. When the book ends, he gets both his legal freedom and frees his mind. The path to freedom was not easy, but it got clearer when he got an education.

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257 Words | 2 Pages

With this, Douglass is addressing the topic of slavery and whether to abolish it or not. And goes about telling the hardships he went through.

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