Rhetorical Devices In Frederick Douglass

Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass Rhetorical Essay As a slave, Frederick Douglass experienced and witnessed dehumanization, which he narrates in the book. He fought for his freedom with the power of education, sets an example for other slaves. Throughout the narrative, Frederick uses numerous devices in order to portray the hardships African American Slaves went through in America to persuade readers that slavery should be abolished. Using his credibility to state his experience, and exposing the truth of our tainted history was the reason Frederick chose to write this book. He is able to effectively able to approach this subject is because he went through it firsthand, and approaches the gruesome reality. In many chapters he not only …show more content…
In order to express this, he conveys the tone with the rhetorical device called Pathos (an appeal to provoke an emotional response). “The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped longest. He would whip her to make her scream, and whip her to make her hush; and not until overcome by fatigue, would he cease to swing the blood-clotted cowskin.” (4) The strong use of imagery vividly shows the horrors Douglass faced, and what many other slaves went through as well. The first person perspective the story was written, and graphicness of what he witnessed incorporates into Pathos because it is almost like we are living through it as well. Despite these hardships, another common tone is hopefulness. “Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read.” (20) Throughout his journey, he remains hopeful by using his education to become free. Along with tone, Douglass utilizes different types of diction and syntax in order to evoke a different mood. It is most seen when uses words like slave not just because he is talking about his life as one, but also to apply an emotional effect. The word slave uses parallelism in order to present ideas equally and emphasize his meaning. Along with the word brutalize which is repeated throughout the book as a way to describe slavery. Specifically, in chapter eight, Douglass describes how men, women, and children were treated like property of the slave owner. They were stripped of their humanity because of how brutally they were treated. It can also be seen in the third chapter when Douglass is talking about the slave’s chores “His food was too wet or dry; he got it too soon or too late; he was too hot or too cold; he had too much hay and not enough grain; or he had too