Examples Of Personifying America By Mary Ann Shadd Cary

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An African American writer, lawyer, and abolitionist, Mary Ann Shadd Cary published a newspaper called Provincial Freeman, after escaping to a fugitive slave community in Canada. Recently, the United States had passed the Fugitive Slave Act and was on the brink of the Civil War, with the treatment of African Americans growing ever worse. Unfortunately, Cary found many people who opposed the establishment of an African American newspaper and many of her own countrymen who seemed impassive to their struggle. In an effort to show the necessity of having a newspaper written by African Americans, one which showed the abolitionists’ perspective in the turbulent times, Cary wrote an editorial, in an urgent tone, utilizing personification and rhetorical …show more content…

Much of targeted audience hailed from the United States, and seemed content with simply fleeing from the chaos, placing the thoughts of their homeland into a dark corner of their mind. However, Cary brings back their repressed patriotic feelings, placing the United States as a center of one of her arguments. Personifying America, Cary states that “as the great country grows, we grow with it; as it improves and progresses, we are carried forward on the bosom of its onward tide”. Commonly, Americans refer to the United States as a mother, and one of the most comforting places of a mother will always be the warmth and protectiveness of her bosom. Here, Cary refers to the United States as a mother, mentioning one of the most warm and protective places on her: the bosom. By bring the United States to life and comparing her to a mother, Cary awakens some deep part of her American audience that desired to stay with and protect their homeland from the plague that is slavery. Once the previously apathetic African Americans reawaken to the abolitionist cause, Cary will be able to gather additional support for her dream of an African American newspaper. Since these abolitionists reside in Canada, they cannot directly fight to free America. Instead, they must accomplish what they can through words, and the strongest and easiest course to accomplish this goal would be through the retention and expansion of the …show more content…

Questioning their reasoning, Cary asks her opposition, “Is not that plain?” at the conclusion of one of her arguments based around the fact that African Americans need an outlet for their own voices, because without one, they would be at “at the mercy of the demagogue” in America. By asking such a question after a stream of persuasive rhetoric, Cary, who seems almost impatient, tries to reiterate her basic argument in the simplest way possible, so her entire audience can easily comprehend her thesis. Clearly, she believes in the evident necessity of her newspaper, and desires for her audience to understand and sympathize with her beliefs. As the final line of her piece, Cary asks “Do you agree with us?”. By utilizing personal diction in this question, she directly asks each person reading her editorial this inquiry, allowing them to be increasingly swayed by her words, since humans normally feel more attached to an idea if they themselves seem to be an important part of it. Additionally, by compiling all her supporters into an inclusive “us”, Cary creates a sense of unity within the African Americans, the abolitionists, and their supporters, a feeling many human beings desire to understand. When she forms this inclusive diction into a question, Cary seems to be asking - at the most basic level - whether or not her audience agrees with

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