Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass Rhetorical Analysis

Throughout the “Narrative of Fredrick Douglass”, Douglass develops an image between true and false Christianity. Douglass elaborates his point in the opening appendix, calling the former “the Christianity of Christ” and the latter “the Christianity of this land.” Douglass describes the ordeal that slaveholders’ Christianity is not a given evidence of natural goodness, but an artificial state of self-righteous brutality. To tackle this distinction, Douglass states a basic contradiction between the charitable, peaceful beliefs of Christianity and the violence from the immoral actions of slaveholders. The character that is described as a good example for this theme is Thomas Auld.

Although slaveholders would beg to differ, you should keep in mind the cruelty slaves experienced by slaves. One should consider the moral , social, and religious ways. First, Douglass says the slaveholders believed what they were doing was right; however, morally they were changed by slaveholding. Douglass supports this by explains how his mistress was majorly affected. “ She has bread for the hungry, clothes for the naked and comfort for every mourner that came within her reach.

The Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass challenges and enhances information from the textbook America a Narrative History. In Chapter 13 of the textbook, the Second Great Awakening is mentioned, and the author talks about how large camp meetings were held, which resulted in many converting to Methodism. Similarly, Douglass, as his master attended one, mentions a camp meeting, where Douglass hoped his master would become kinder or emancipate his slaves, however, instead it made his master crueler. In addition, in Chapter 15 the conflict between a true Christian and a Southern Christian is brought up. In both the narrative and the textbook, the fact that slavery is endorsed by the bible is brought up as part of the pro-slavery movement.

In the autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Douglass discusses the hardships he encounters that transformed him from an unknowledgable slave to a powerful man who took a stand for the abolishment of slavery. He utilizes an assertive tone in order to grasp the attention of a primarily white audience because he believes they are the only ones who can penetrate moral judgement into the heads of slaveholders of the South. Douglass characterizes Christianity as the most influential source that encourages the continuation of slavery. The growing fear and brutality among slaveholders towards many slaves persists as long as slaveholders manipulate religion as a validation for their actions. Douglass uncovers

Aren’t they the children of god as others? Aren’t they sharing the same blood of human being? So, why should they be a slave, why not a respectful human? In fact, Douglass employs the rhetorical appeals of logos and pathos mostly and sometimes ethos also effectively. Even if Douglass incorporated mostly persuasive logical claims through the use of true facts of reality matched with emotional situation, his audience may find him aggressive because of his heated and distressful word choice.

Although from different eras, both Douglass and Rowlandson use similar techniques such as religion, repetition, and sentimentalism to show that being held captive and slavery is wrong. America was founded on Christian beliefs, so Douglass attacked that. He states, “If the churches and ministers of our country were not stupidly blind, or most wickedly indifferent, they, too, would so regard it” (Douglass 1037) Douglass is making a bold move that will spark controversy. He uses statements like this to keep the audience’s attention.

It is a common argument for Christian slaveholders to make “…that God cursed Ham, and therefore American slavery is right…” (5). this argument exposes their hypocrisy as it conveys how they attempt to stretch small pieces of scripture to justify the violence of the American slavery. Douglass thus asks if it is humane to use a small piece of writing to damn an entire race to hardship and subhuman treatment. This case of blasphemy is amplified by the observation that Douglass makes of one of his slave masters, Mr. Covey, in that “he seemed to think himself equal to deceiving the almighty” (61).

According to the constitution anyone can be whatever religion they choose to be, but according to Douglass, they are hypocrites. There are two types of Christians; false and real. False Christians are white, religious hypocrites who uphold slavery, while real Christians treat other races equally. The slaveholders in the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,” such as Thomas Auld and Edward Covey, are all false Christians.

During the time when Douglass wrote this book, there were several myths which were used to justify slavery. The slaveholder during his time justified this inhuman practice using different arguments. The first argument they used was the religion. From the narrative, Douglass says that slaveholders called themselves Christians which was the dominant religion by then.

Douglass shows us an example of religious irony when he explains how his county views the murder of any colored person. In chapter four, Douglass states, “that killing a slave or any colored person , in Talbot county, Maryland, is not treated as a crime, either by the courts or the community,” (Douglass 34) The religious irony is shown here because the South has always been known as the ‘Bible belt’ and yet these actions were accepted, and even

In the 1800’s slavery was a major issue in the United States which was dealt with on a daily basis in the South. The “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” Fedrick Douglass himself expresses the differences in the lives of black people in the North and in the South. The South was known to have some of the wealthiest white people in the states, that wealth and power they had was due to the many slaves they had working in their plantations. In the other hand, the North had black people getting paid for their labor, their black people were free. They were treated like human beings and even though they might still encounter problems with some of the whites these problems where nothing compared to the retched life blacks had in the South.

Douglass has shown how religious slaveholders are the worst especially when entertainment comes into play. The first being from one of his slaveholders Master Thomas, he whipped a young woman while reading a quote from the scripture to explain his reason for whipping her. The next example was with his other Master Mr.Covey, he would go to church and preach the word but come back beating slaves and going against the almighty God. The last example that is shown is again shown with Mr.Covey, he was guilty of compelling his woman slave to commit the sin of adultery. All of the examples illustrate that religious slaveholders are worst than non-religious slaveholders.

Christianity was, to the slaves of America, (something with a double meaning). In the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass an American Slave, Frederick Douglass, the author, argues about how Christianity can mean one thing to a free white man and something completely different to a black slave. The slave owners follow the ‘Christianity of the Land’ while the slaves follow the ‘Christianity of Christ.’ Frederick begins to build his credibility to a, white, northern, audience by including documents from trustworthy writers and by getting into personal experiences through his writing. Throughout the narrative, he is articulate in how he writes, and it shows the reader that he is well educated.

Douglass points to the vast unwillingness from the group of whites that refuses to fully perceive and accept African-Americans as deserving and equal citizens of the nation. Based on his personal experiences as a slave, Douglass is abundantly aware that the battle to abolish slavery is not an easy task. For the first twenty years of his life, he witnessed firsthand the abject cruelty of that institution in our country. Tactfully, Douglass seizes this opportunity to publicly highlight the unmerited and coarse differences in the treatment between the whites as opposed to the blacks living in the United States during this time period. He makes a “powerful testaments to the hypocrisy, bigotry and inhumanity of slavery” (Bunch 1).

Douglass tells us this by saying that he believes anyone who is a slave owner cannot be a Christian. In his view, he believes being a slave owner violates the very principles of being a Christian. Auld quote he believes that the Christianity practiced by the Slave owners and the Christianity practiced by non-slave owners are two