Rhetorical Analysis Of Frederick Douglass

In The Autobiography of Frederick Douglass, Douglass reflects on the feelings he experienced when he became a free man. Upon arriving in a free state for the first time, Frederick Douglass experiences a plethora of emotions such as excitement because he is finally free, relief that he successfully arrived in the North, loneliness when he realizes he can trust nobody, and fear of being captured by white men and returned to his master. His use of language in the passage helps him convey these feelings while strengthening his emotions in order to demonstrate the adjustments slaves had to make upon escaping the tortures of the South.
Douglass begins by informing the reader that when asked how it felt to become a free man he never knew how to properly …show more content…
He was lonely because he was afraid to trust anyone knowing they could decide to turn him in at any moment. His use of repetition reinforces the way he felt upon arriving in the North. He states that he “was in the midst of thousands, and yet a perfect stranger; without home and without friends, in the midst of thousands of [his] own brethren-children of a common Father, and yet [he] dared not to unfold to any of them [his] sad condition” (lines 16-20). Loneliness conquered him and he had nowhere to go, nobody to talk to, and no way of knowing what to do next. He had to start a new life on his own from nothing and he could ask no one for help as there was the possibility that they would return him to the South. By alluding to the Bible, he displays how while he was surrounded by people who are all equals created by God, he could trust no one. He expresses his fear using inverted syntax in the statement: “I was afraid to speak to any one for fear of speaking to the wrong one…” (lines 20-21). The emphasis is placed on “one”, demonstrating how Douglass no longer had another person in his life in which he could confide in because he was scared they would be the person to betray him. The scenarios he uses to describe slave catchers reveals how slaves perceived these men. First as pirates, then as “money-loving kidnappers, whose business it was to lie in wait for the panting fugitive, as the ferocious beasts of the forest lie in wait for their prey” (lines 22-25). These harsh words and the simile are used in order to get the message across to the reader that these people were the animals, not the slaves although they were treated as such. He continues to say that he developed the motto “Trust no man!” (line 26) because when he looked around he only saw potential