Frederick Douglass’ Outright and Subtle Irony
Frederick Douglass’ Outright and Subtle Irony
Frederick Douglass’ Outright and Subtle Irony Frederick Douglass’ autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave offers a depiction of slavery like very few before him, from his firsthand accounts. Douglass wanted to show his opposition to slavery and knew he would meet many criticisms. Due to this criticism, he had to mask much of his work with irony. Some of his works are obvious and others are a bit harder to see. The more difficult ones were put in place by Douglass in order to provide a deep and profound statement, without arousing too much opposition. If he had he would have faced much more threats than he did. He not only had to discredit his oppressors, he had to distinguish himself from their propaganda about slaves. Frederick Douglass uses many forms of irony. His most powerful forms of irony are subtle, not always outright; this was in order to criticize the racism and white culture of the time without causing too much conflict.
Frederick Douglass had a lot of criticism. He had to appeal to the various political, sociological, and aesthetic interests of an entire civilization of critics. He used irony as a way to get people thinking, reasoning, and questioning slavery. Douglass uses several different layers of irony in his writing. First and most visible is the basic sentence level irony. One of the most profound examples of this would be in chapter ten when he states, “To make a contented slave it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken the moral and mental vision and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason.” (Douglass, 1845,p. 90) The irony is that in order to make a human a slave, you have to take away the very things that make them human; taking away their ability to reason, to feel, and to let them only know sorrow. This was often used in the perpetuation that slaves were only “unfeeling
Frederick Douglass’ Outright and Subtle Irony Frederick Douglass’ autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave offers a depiction of slavery like very few before him, from his firsthand accounts. Douglass wanted to show his opposition to slavery and knew he would meet many criticisms. Due to this criticism, he had to mask much of his work with irony. Some of his works are obvious and others are a bit harder to see. The more difficult ones were put in place by Douglass in order to provide a deep and profound statement, without arousing too much opposition. If he had he would have faced much more threats than he did. He not only had to discredit his oppressors, he had to distinguish himself from their propaganda about slaves. Frederick Douglass uses many forms of irony. His most powerful forms of irony are subtle, not always outright; this was in order to criticize the racism and white culture of the time without causing too much conflict.
Frederick Douglass had a lot of criticism. He had to appeal to the various political, sociological, and aesthetic interests of an entire civilization of critics. He used irony as a way to get people thinking, reasoning, and questioning slavery. Douglass uses several different layers of irony in his writing. First and most visible is the basic sentence level irony. One of the most profound examples of this would be in chapter ten when he states, “To make a contented slave it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken the moral and mental vision and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason.” (Douglass, 1845,p. 90) The irony is that in order to make a human a slave, you have to take away the very things that make them human; taking away their ability to reason, to feel, and to let them only know sorrow. This was often used in the perpetuation that slaves were only “unfeeling
References: Douglass, F. (1845). Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. Bedford Group