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Frederick Douglass Rhetorical Structure

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African American Abolitionist, Frederick Douglass composes a autobiography known as Narrative of The Life of Frederick Douglass, which is based on his experiences as a slave and feelings towards slavery. The main purpose to his autobiography is to illustrate the miserable experiences that slaves went through. He also describes his autobiography in a frank tone to explain to the audience about his tormenting experience as a slave. Douglass embodies his syntactical structure by inaugurating his syntax with various brief declarative sentences then transitions to polysyndeton, and ends with juxtaposition in order to illustrate his emotions toward slavery. Douglass introduces his autobiography by using various brief declarative sentences to illustrate …show more content…

Next, Douglass demonstrates the use of polysyndeton to describe about his father as his master and his mother as a slave. He describes the relationship between his parents and him by claiming, “The whisper that my master was my father, may or may not be true;and, true or false, it is of but little consequences to my purpose whilst that slaveholders have ordained, and by law established that the children of slave women shall in all cases follow the condition of their mothers; and this is done too obviously to administer to their own lust, and make a gratification of their wicked desires profitable as well as pleasurable; for by this cunning arrangement, the slaveholder, in cases no a few, sustains to his slaves the double relation of master and father.”. This is informing to the reader how inhumane it is for the slaveholder to rape a enslaved African American women, in order to gain another slave, also while the father is free, the mother and son stays enslaved. The use of polysyndeton was to give the reader a thought on how barbaric slave owners were and it also creates a flow for the reader to get an idea on the life of

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