Mary Prince Rhetorical Analysis

Mary Prince tries to enhance her cause and makes emphasis on her words using exclamation signs in the first sentence of this passage. At the same time, she lets the audience sees a sense of pain and sadness behind her words to evoke sympathy on the part of the readers and touch that sensitive nerve that the good human beings have. Through her words, her intent is to capture and win over the hearts and support of the people in her effort to abolish the slavery. The pain she feels in her heart when thinking about the abuse and cruel punishments the slaves endured during this era, creates for the readers a comprehensive and compassion mood so that the audience would be more receptive to her story and could change their perspective on these …show more content…
It is like she was saying I am Mary Prince, a black woman and a slave, but I am here! She makes her presence knows by telling her story and raising her voice in a world where both slaves and women have no voice or rights. She is living proof of the cruelties of slavery and true evidence because she has lived and suffered its the degradations and torments. Her body and tormented soul are the evidence that supports her cause and validate the consequences of her purpose to expose slavery and the numerous people subjected to tortures and abuses. When Prince says herself that she knows the feelings of the slaves, she is identifying the pain faced by her once again, but the most important thing is that she is humanizing them in the eyes of her readers. She is proving that they are not objects that are incapable of expressing their concerns and complaints on their own with regards to the abuses they suffer, that they are not unaware of pain and suffering after being beating, or that they are not brave enough to raise their voice before so much injustice. She is saying that she and the other slaves are also human beings like any other person who can feel joy or sadness as well as the white or rich people. Slaves are not guilty that they do not control their own lives and they do not deserve that based on the color of …show more content…
She wants them to be witnesses through her experiences of the pain that slaves feel when they are separated from their families, when they are treated like animals, when they are denied even the most basic of human rights or when they are sold and displayed as cattle. She also wants them to see through her eyes the misfortunes she has seen throughout her miserable life. The change of the first (I) to the third person (our, us) shows not only her sense of identity, but also her solidarity with the rest of the victims of this exploitation and indicates once more that her commitment goes beyond the search of her own freedom, but that of all slaves. What is heard it is not only her voice, it is the voice of all women, mothers, and sisters who have been abused psychically and psychologically. This means that thought her claim she is also empowering women’s cause. Though her heartbreaking testimony backed by the scars that slavery has left on her body and soul, Mary Prince’s purpose is to make the people of England wake up to this harsh reality, to be sensitive their cause so that they realize that slavery only leads to a path of blood and suffering. That she, as well as the other slaves, need a change in a system that instead of doing something to stop