Rhetorical Devices Used By Frederick Douglass

In the 1800’s slave narrators began to arise to reveal the life that an African American slave endured. Two influential writers Fredrick Douglas and Booker T. Washington completed narrators explaining the truth behind slavery in the United States. Narrative of the life of Frederick’s Douglas pertains to Douglas struggle for abolishment of slavery. While, Washington’s Up from Slavery arose in the post-civil war era, depicting the success of a former slave through adapting white values and self-reliance. The autobiographies of Washington and Douglas uses their fundamental understanding of; the meaning of freedom, background, and rhetoric devices when explaining the depiction of whites and slaves.
Douglas understanding of freedom for the slaves …show more content…
The authors use pathos, ethos, and logos to change the human’s perception of American Slavery. Both authors used ethos at the beginning of the text to establish creditability and evoke the need for change in their writing. Douglas stated early on that he was born in Tuckahoe and obtains “no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen authentic record containing it” unlike,“ the white children who could tell their ages”(Douglas 19). As Douglas identifies himself as a human that denied the knowledge to identify by his date of birth, that the fellow white children identified by. While Washington also begins by starting his birthplace as “plantation in franklin country, Virginia. I am not quite sure of the exact place or exact date of birth, but at any rate I suspect I must have been born somewhere and at some time”(Washington 1). In comparison, Washington did not compare his birth to a white child but he did establish …show more content…
Early on Douglas fell ignorant due to white slave owners denial of access to gain knowledge. Until later in his childhood Sophia Auld, a tender hearted women, treated Douglas as a human and gave him reading lessons. This quickly ended when Hugh Audit “forbidden Mrs. Auld to instruct me further, telling her, among other things, that it was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read”(Douglas 48). Sophia succumbed to the institutions of slavery by treating Douglas just how her husbanded whished. From this Douglas logically understood the importance of education as the power to overcome the white mans power to enslave a black man. For Douglas learning to read and write was “the pathway to freedom” (Douglas 48). Logic allowed Douglas to overcoming his master Mr. Covey in a battle, which left Douglas, to recall once departed self- confidence. With knowledge Douglas sprit rose, allowing him to depart from slavery and overcome the white mans power. Contrary, Washington believed corporation between races would develop more educational opportunities raising the quality of life for the whites and slaves as a whole. Unlike many colored children, Washington learned at the Hampton Institute. Washington quickly learned the logical reasoning that “there is no education which one can get from books and costly apparatus that is equal