Rhetorical Analysis Of Frederick Douglass Speech

Frederick Douglass, who was born into slavery around 1818, will forever remain one of the most important figures in America's struggle for civil rights and racial equality. As an ex-slave, his inspiration grew beyond his boarders to reach the whole world. Without any formal education, Douglass escaped slavery and became a respected American diplomat, a counselor to four presidents, a highly regarded speaker, and an influential writer. By common consent Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845) is recognized as the best among the many slave narratives that appeared before the Civil War. He amazed people when he spoke bravely in his Fourth of

Well known slave author and orator, Frederick Douglass, in his narrative, “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave” alters the way people view slavery. Douglass’s purpose is to convince the audience that slavery should be abolished. He creates a haunting tone in order to persuade the readers that slavery is wrong. He uses many real life accounts of horrifying instances of beatings, murders and torture to prove that slavery is unjust.

America’s history is overrun with oppression and injustice based on race, ethnicity, and other traits that innocent victims have no control over. As a result, the reputation of the United States is forever tainted by it’s dark past, and still practices these surviving habits of hatred. Civil liberty issues faced since the establishment of the country have yet to be resolved because of the ever-present mistreatment, corruption in positions of authority, and the dehumanization of minorities.

One of the strongest pieces of evidence the author uses in support of their argument is, “At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed… For is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder… The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled… and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.” What Douglass tries to accomplish is to tell the citizens that words will not make a difference if they want change. Only violence can make an impact because the slaves’ voices are not really being heard. This evidence is strong because Douglass attempts to use the rhetorical appeal of pathos in

Frederick Douglass is a remarkable figure when it comes to describe and expose the outcome of the oppression in the black race since memorable times seen and experienced through the centuries expressed in slavery, racism and mistreat. In “The Meaning of Fourth of July for the Negro”, Douglass states the values of not only a race but a human being in his speech, by allowing himself to represent and describe the meaning behind it by using juxtaposition, irony and imagery to fight

Once the great Frederick Douglass said “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” Frederick Douglass was a more effective speaker than Elizabeth Cady Stanton because of his uses of rhetorical questions, knowledge of his topic, and uses of pathos, ethos, and logos.

In a time where African American have been deprived of rights, Frederick Douglass seeks to highlight the hardships faced by a slave to white Americans. In order to better get his point across Douglass utilizes a multitude of rhetorical devices, from chiasmus and parallelism to imagery and paradox. In some cases, he highlights the complexity if a subject and in others, he makes the point clearer to the reader by juxtaposing two ideas to emphasize the differences and underlying message through what ties them together. With the use of these devices backing his point he effectively appeals to his audience's pathos and logos which allows him to persuade his audience to open their eyes to their wrongdoings.

Think about waking up every morning knowing that your mother, which is also your only known family member, lives 12 miles away from you and that the only time you get to see her in when it is in the middle of the night, well Frederick talks about how he grew up in slavery and how he was raised through all the difficult and hard times and how he overcame. In the book Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) by Frederick Douglass. He talks about how he and the other slaves thought of things like what plantations were better and what the songs meant to slaves as that aged. He talk about how slaves grow up to watch white children read and talk about how old they are and how as a slave if you try to read you get hit and they never actually know their exact age. Frederick used pathos, logos and ethos but I felt both emotion and logos when reading this book because it let me learn more about how my race was treated in the slave times.

Purpose: By mentioning how they were ranked with the rest of the farm animals, Douglass showed how slaves were usually not even considered to be human, and that they were often compared to lowly, brute

The struggle of slavery was a never ending battle which could not have been won by standing idly by, watching it’s mass destruction take place. Frederick Douglass, born a slave in 1818 stated “Without a struggle, there can be no progress”. This quote does an excellent job of capturing the essence of his memoir, “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.” Through recounting his brutal experiences as a slave, Frederick Douglass utilizes rhetorical strategies in the form of rhetorical imagery, anecdote, and simile to expose the horrors of slavery to the uninformed population of the United States.

Within this quotation, Douglass uses several examples of antithesis to illustrate the contrast between Mrs. Auld before she was given a slave, and after. For example, when he says, “made of all sweet accord, changed to one harsh and horrid discord;”, he emphasizes that when a person has a slave, they become more cruel and severe as a person. He also describes that his master had an “angelic face [that] gave place to that of a demon”. This antithetical example shows that owning a slave can change your morals, and if you perceived as a good person or not. He also includes this description of his new master because he is both trying to convince black and white people that slavery is harmful. In the first sentence, when Douglass includes “under

July 5th 1952 Frederick douglass got an invitation to make speech about what the fourth of July meant to the negroes. Douglass wrote a letter which especially focuses on the great injustice the Fourth of July symbolizes for enslaved blacks while White Caucasians trouted about the rights and liberties all people have. Frederick Douglass utilizes rhetorical devices like parallel structure, repetition and cacophonous languages in order to explain how the state of disrespect, brutality inhuman ways African American man and women faced.

How would you react if you were being enslaved due to the color of your skin? I expect that you would want to do everything you could to change the way the world was thinking. In the Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass written by himself, Douglass is encountered with numbers of different challenges. He has to adjust to the way he is forced to live, educate himself, and reach his goal of making an escape. Overall, he wanted to expose the evils that followed slavery. Douglass appeals to ethos, logos, and pathos in an attempt to end slavery.

He uses this rhetorical appeal to make his point come across more clearly when describing and discussing slavery. He also uses logos to explain what the slaves could do and what they were forbidden to do, "It was committed in the presence of slaves, and of course they could neither institute a suit, nor testify against him; and thus the guilty perpetrator of one of the bloodiest and most foul murders goes unwhipped of justice, " (Douglass 39). Just from reading this one quote you can easily see that slaves didn't have much say in anything when it came to the being before the masters. Any reader that happened to be educated about slavery could tell how unfair the dominant white American species were to the slaves. During this time, the word sympathy would never apply to the enslaved Americans all due to their

In “The Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglas” the whites did not perceive slaves as human beings. Douglas tries to show us how Black American slaves are basically human beings as their white counterparts. In his book he perceives the gross racial discrimination at an earlier age and says, “I do