Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass Rhetorical Analysis

Mia O'Neill
Helker
Period F AP LANG
January 4th, 2023

Frederick Douglass: Attacking Religion to Radicalize the Reader Slavery is a terrific proposition. Natural even. Slave owners provide slaves with food, shelter, and water, and in exchange, only ask for obedience and a sacrifice of personal freedoms. Startlingly, this was the notion that many people in the North and South held during 1845, when slavery was a prosperous institution and on a larger scale than anywhere else in the world. More than just unpaid labor, America’s form of slavery instituted “chattel slavery,” which made it socially acceptable to view black and enslaved people as less human than their pale-skinned “superiors.” But despite slavery's cruelty, many chillingly believed

Douglass’s Narrative Of the Life of Frederick Douglass not only depicts his own life and experiences as a slave but also reveals the psychology behind the slave owners and their evil actions. He blames the institution of slavery for the atrocities committed, rather than the crimes of a single slave owner. Part of Douglass's talent was his ability to understand and appeal to his audience. African Americans and slaves were mostly illiterate, and literate Southerners were not interested in the reminiscings of a former slave. Therefore, at the time, his audience were wealthy, white, Christian, and educated northerners. In his Narrative, Frederick Douglass focuses his rhetoric on slaveowners and their hypocritical relationship to Christianity as well as his own unique relationship with religion and sin, hereby disproving the stereotypes about slavery that his

He argues that it is not slave owners, but the very institution of slavery that is anti-Christian. When Douglass begins living with the Aulds, he is grateful for Sophia Auld’s kindness. Douglass depicts his mistress's fall from compassion to cruelty as slavery corrupts her: “That cheerful eye, under the influence of slavery, soon became red with rage; that voice, made all of sweet accord, changed to one of harsh and horrid discord; and that angelic face gave place to that of a demon” (Douglass 30). Not only does Douglass insert biblical allusions through his reference to the angel and the devil, but he disproves the notion that all cruel slave owners are born evil. He describes how the generous Mrs. Auld turns wicked as she becomes polluted with power. And he juxtaposes the “angelic face” and the “demon” to make the point that looking innocent on the outside does not justify the evil within. As if he is saying: Being a “good Christain” does not protect one against evil acts. Moreover, within the appendix of the Narrative, Douglass declines that he had any intention to alienate any northern Christians. Douglass states he does not hate Christians but the corruption Christianity allows. He declares, “I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I, therefore, hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and