Narrative of Frederick Douglass Essay, Study notes of English

Download Narrative of Frederick Douglass Essay and more Study notes English in PDF only on Docsity! Frederick Douglass’ book includes a lot of complex ideas and actions that are hard to justify via normal explanation, therefore, DSUBI&SsiUselOfiRhistoniejnd oinieniiteranyidevices diversify his writing. Throughout the book he uses many different kinds of devices, but his mist effective ones are Pathos, Ethos, and Imagery. These devices are so effective because they touch on the readers feelings, the readers search for credibility, and the readers imagination of events. slave, he especially makes the reader feel like he was feeling back when he was a slave. To start, Douglass portrays, “The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is Douglass uses pathos to call up emotion in the readers and cause them to feel sympathy and pain towards the slaves who had so much sorrow. Similarly, Douglass also mentions that "It was and a half-cent to bury one" (Ch. 4 Pg. 15). Douglass uses pathos and allusion to say nonchalantly that it was common knowledge that nobody cared about slaves dying. He shows the true cruelty of the people by using a sentence that was a well-known sentence at that time. In the same fashion, Douglass explains, “The rule is, no matter how coarse the food, only let per week, and very little else, either in the shape of meat or vegetables” (Ch. 9 Pg. 31). Douglass is explaining the conditions that he and his fellow slaves are plagued with and that they must deal with it day in and day out. The situation of a slave is no better than that of a man in prison, which is a few pages Douglass mentions it is better to be imprisoned than to be a slave. SS|iABETY IED or tray cruelly ed many other eUssOMelexpenlenees! For example, Douglass states, “In hottest summer and coldest winter, | was kept almost naked—no shoes, no on the cold, damp, clay floor, with my head in and feet out” (Ch. 5 Pg. 16). The author does this by describing to the audience that he was naked and had no clothes. He also talked about the cold nights and how he would steal a bag that would not even cover him up all the way to keep him warm. He does this not to make the northerners feel for him, but for the slaves that suffered more than him. Also, he describes, in his own words, his master’s wealthiness via imagery, “To describe the wealth of Colonel Lloyd would be almost equal to describing the abuse, but this was a story that he is assuming because he had heard it through the word of other people... and the other people could have made things up or extended the story to make it sound more interesting. It is one of those situations where people start saying ‘I heard that...’ and different versions of the story are created. Another hard to believe statement that Douglass makes is, "Nothing seemed to make her more angry than to see me with a newspaper." (Ch. 7 Pg. 22). Douglass portrays the irony by saying that Mistress Sophia Auld was the one that taught Douglass the alphabet but now she doesn't want him to read. The statement that ‘nothing made her more angry’ is slightly ignorant because at first Mrs. Auld wanted him to be educated so she might not have been so mad, she could have just been obeying what her husband said about not teaching a slave to read. And once again, he says, reverence for justice, and some respect for humanity” (Ch. 10 Pg. 46). This comparison of Covey to Freeman, where Douglass acknowledges that although Mr. Freeland was a slaveowner... He wasn’t a bad person he was just plagued by the ideas of owning humans, just like Mrs. Auld was... This proves that Douglass does have a real story, and he is truthful because he is making a real-life comparison of two slaveholders in which he could only make if he was a slave of those slaveholders. As proof of credibility though, Douglass included a letter and a preface in order to have other people prove his story as true instead of him saying it himself. For example, in the preface, Garrison states, “As language" (Preface, ix). Garrison helps develop the credibility of Douglass by adding his qualities as a public speaker and pretty much saying he knows what he is talking about and is educated in many subjects. And like Garrison, Phillips, who wrote the Letter that precedes the Narrative of Frederick Douglass along with the preface, he included. And again, helping prove Douglass’ credibility, Garrison includes, "I never hated slavery so intensely as at that moment” (Preface, fix). It is describing Garrison's emotion and shows how much Douglass impacted him. It also shows how his views were changed as a result. Briefly, the author, Frederick Douglass, was a previously enslaved being in which once he became free, he decided to write about his journey to becoming free and the overwhelming events along the way. His use of rhetoric and literary devices are what carried his book into