Rhetorical Analysis Essay On Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass Rhetorical Analysis Essay During the antebellum period of America, especially after the Second Great Awakening, Americans across the nation became deeply devoted to their Christian faiths. This was most prevalent in the South, where slave owners from all economic and social classes gathered together to worship their God and hear the message of love and forgiveness. Despite the message, many slaveholders chose to maliciously beat, starve, rape, and in some cases kill their slaves. With that weighing heavily upon his mind, Frederick Douglass addressed the hypocrisy of these Christians in his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. He argues that people cannot call themselves followers of Christ when they intentionally choose to maliciously abuse a group of people for the sole purpose of their own benefit which is conveyed to the reader through Douglass’s extensive usage of irony as well as his references to the Bible. Like many southerners, Douglass’s owner, Thomas Auld, becomes a devout Christian during the Second Great Awakening in 1832. However, all that Douglass …show more content…
Through his strong usage of irony, he is able to show that despite their so called deep beliefs in their faith, that the slaveholders simultaneously choose to ignore all of the teachings that they should hold dear so as to allow themselves to utilize an individual for their own benefit. He also points out the glaring irony in their usage of biblical references which essentially highlight the evils of the institution that they are trying to uphold. It is with all of this in mind that Douglass ultimately sums up the astoundingly hypocritical nature of the southern “Christians” by saying, “ The man who wields the blood-clotted cowskin during the week, fill the pulpit on Sunday, and claims to be a minister of the meek and lowly Jesus”