A Rhetorical Analysis of The Autobiography of Frederick Douglass

Slavery can be a difficult subject to talk about, especially in today’s society, as slavery is seen as a thing of the past. While this is true, racial injustice and discrimination still conitnue to extist today. Through Fredrick Douglass’s first autobiography, Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass, and American Slave, Douglass begins to show what life was truely like as a slave in the early 1800s, creating a message of patience, strength, determination, and success. To help develop this overall message, Dougalss uses rhetorical devices such as analogies, anecdotes, and imagery to help support and appeal to his ethos and pathos. 

One of the prominent rhetorical devices Douglass uses throughout the autobiography is analogies. Through the use of analogies, Douglass is able to establish his pathos by conveying the emotions he felt his experiences were similar. This is very helpful as the majority of the audience has never experienced what it was like to live as a slave, and by using analogies he better conveys his message in a way that more people are able to understand. The purpose of the analogies varies slightly, however, many of the analogies made are used to represent how slaves were treated like animals as well as disposable property. “Our food was coarse cornmeal boiled. This was called mush. The children were then called, like so many pigs, and like so many pigs they devoured the mush,” (Douglass 23). By using this analogy, Douglass is effectively showing how slaves were treated poorly, as he conveys it in such a way that makes it easier for people who have never experienced slavery to understand to a certain level what it felt like emotionally as well as physically. Another example of an analogy Douglass uses to compare what his life was like is found on page 93, with the quote, “I have been frequently asked how I felt when I found myself in a free State. I have never been able to answer the question with any satisfaction to myself… In writing to a dear friend, immediately after my arrival in New York, I said I felt like one who had escaped a den of hungry lions,” (Douglass 93). This quote depicts an anaology to which Douglass is describing what if felt l like to finally be free after so many years of cruel slavery. With this, he creates an analogy that correlates his previous masters to hungry lions, showing how just like hungry lions, they did not want him to escape as they depended on them for their own wealth and success. In relation to this, another quote in Douglass’s autobiography depicts another analogie between his slave master and animals, as shown in the following quote, “Such  was his cunning, that we used to call him, among ourselves, ‘the snake’.” (Douglass 53). Both of these quotes are able to show what both Douglass, and most likely many other slaves, see their masters. This allows for a compare and contrast pattern of development to form, as the slaves begin to compare and contrast their masters to wild animals such as lions and snakes. 

With analogies in mind, anecdotes are also one of the most prominent rhetorical devices that Douglass uses throughout his book, as a majority of his autobiography is comprised of anecdotes of him when he was younger and what he went through as a slave and his dreams and desires for freedom. These anecdotes also allow for Douglass to establish and appeal to his ethos. By sharing his experiences as a slave, he is able to establish credibility which allows for his audience to believe everything he is saying about his experiences with slavery and freedom. Not only do his anecdotes appeal to his ethos, but they also appeal to his pathos.  This is shown in the following quote, “I have seen Mary contending with the pigs for the offal thrown into the street. So much was Mary kicked and cut to pieces, that she was often called ‘pecked’ as her name,” (Douglass 31). Through this quote, Douglass begins to describe an event that was the result of another event, displaying a cause and effect pattern of development, while appealing to both his ethos and pathos. By sharing these intimate details that he may have never told anyone before, he establishes an emotional connection with the reader as the reader tries to understand and empathize with Douglass’s anecdotes. These anecdotes also take on another big role, as they become a base for a vast majority of the patterns of development, including cause and effect, narration, description, process analysis, and comparing and contrasting. 

In correlation with the anecdotes used, the imagery also helps to further develop and describe the physical and emotional toll it took on him as a slave and what happened during these events. By using imagery, he also begins to use process analysis, as the imagery generates an idea of how his experiences folded out and what was happening during moments such as the following, “I have often been awakened at the dawn of day by the most heart-rending shrieks of an own aunt of mine, whom he used to tie up to a joist, and whip upon her naked back till she was literally covered with blood.” (Douglass 5). From this quote, Douglass is able to describe this event in high detail, which allows for the reader to partially experience and understand what Douglass has gone through, creating an emotional connection between the reader and the writer. With the formation of an emotional bond, this allows for Douglass to appeal to pathos, as he is using emotions as a way to understand what he has gone through and how it has changed him. Imagery also allows for patterns of development, specifically description and narration to form. By forming these patterns of development, Douglass is able to present his ideas and experiences in a way that flows in his book. 

Throughout the entirety of Douglass’s autobiography, he is able to encapsulate most of his life experiences and convey it to an audience where a vast majority have never experienced anything close to what Douglass depicts through his various uses of analogies, anecdotes, and imagery. All three of these rhetorical devices, analogy, anecdotes, and imagery, allow for Douglass to create several different patterns of development, which then in turn help his appeal to both ethos and pathos.