Rhetorical Analysis Of Walk A Mile In My Shoes

‘Walk a Mile in My Shoes’
Slavery is one of the most important and controversial topics in United States history. A decade after Jamestown’s settlement, slaves appeared in British North America and the landscape of the U.S. would never be the same. Enslaved African-Americans were denied any sort of rights or ownership and were sentenced to a lifetime of labor under a slave master. This prolonged suffering led to Northern Abolitionists campaigning for the freedom of slaves during the years before the civil war. The three abolitionists analyzed in the primary sources utilized empathy and scholarly language in an attempt persuade a discriminatory, non-African-American audience against slavery. In order to fully comprehend what another person has experienced, is it best to look at the …show more content…
The passage immediately begins with a slave women murdering her own babies with an axe. Moreover, a little girl named Caroline witnesses this occurrence and asks her uncle, Mr. S, why she had committed such an action. He explained that she just found out her children were sold to a different plantation. Thus, she rather them be killed than work “under a driver’s leash, where she could never see them again.” The purpose of this is to compel the audience to realize that in some instances, death is more favorable than slavery. Mr. S continued to exclaim, “She was afraid of [her master’s] cruelty, and she killed herself.. You can judge from this what slavery is. The mother, who had tried [slavery], preferred death.” Presenting children in these contexts could also be a tactic to further coerce the reader of the wickedness that accompanies slavery. Similarly, in Twelve Years a Slave, Solomon Northup narrates his first-hand experience of being sold into slavery while also incorporating children. He recalled the day he was being auctioned off in his master’s “new lot,” when a mother, Eliza, was separated from her two children, Randall and Emily. The