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Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass Essay

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Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass Essay
In this essay I will be discussing the Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass. Fredrick was born in Tuckahoe, Maryland; Mr. Douglass does not know his birth date. Mr. Douglass was about 27/28 years of age when he wrote his autobiography. Fredrick Douglass's mother was Harriet Bailey, and he believes his father was his mater. He was separated from his mother before he was 12 months of age. Douglass's autobiography proved powerful in the fight for the abolition of slavery because of his skill in using effective rhetorical and literary techniques to portray a clear picture of slave life. Douglass uses imagery throughout the narrative to help communicate the brutality of slave life. One example of imagery is "... the warm red blood came …show more content…
One example is of anaphora " He was proud", " He was ambitious", " He was cruel", " He was of all", the reader could think of him as being a cruel and scary man. Douglass uses parallel structure " To be accused was to be punished, the reader gets the feeling that being punished was terrible. Another structure i noticed was antimetabole " His words were perfect keeping with his looks, and his looks were in perfect keeping with his words",the reader gets the feeling that he is perfect in everyway. Douglass uses irony to show that it was a backwards time, for example,the horses were treated better than slaves a example of this statement is "If a horse looked tired or did not move fast enough it was the slaves fault" , it is ironic because normally people are treated better and with more respect than they were then. Whats is ironic about when the slave tells the truth? Douglass says " informed by his overseer that for having found fault with his master", you do not get in trouble for telling the truth now but back then if you told the truth you were beaten. The irony about the prejudices among slaves was " under the prejudices slaves think their master is better than others". The Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass uses the different structures. This book is a autobiography about Mr. Douglass, I thought the book was very descriptive. Mr. Douglass is a amazing writer,
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