Throughout the narrative, Frederick Douglass has several different tones.Īt some points he is reserved Other times, he’s angry, or emotional. He felt that with all the hard work they did, learning how to read should be their reward. Douglass took advantage of the time he had, and shared it with other slaves. Auld taught him the alphabet and how to read, but that did not last long once Mr. He knew that there were white, educated people who could teach him how to read, and also believed he would meet those people, and so he did. Douglass believed that slaves should have the right to learn.

He knew that he was not meant to be a slave forever, even though some people died a slave they were free once they died. He is letting the reader know that there will always be a part in you that knows where you came from and what you dreamed your life would be. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery”.ĭouglass experienced slavery first hand during his childhood, and remembered his old desire for knowledge and education in his youth he valued education and knowledge as power.

Another way he used ethos is when he states “The more I read, the more I was lead to abhor and detest my enslavers. Douglass was apart of the group of free slaves that were able to recollect the experiences of what they went through. It is a fact that not every slave was able to be free, many slaves died as slaves. In Chapter 5, he uses ethos when he says “in the darkest hours of my career in slavery, this living word of faith and spirit of hope departed not from me…”.ĭouglass is expressing to us that he believes that he will be free one day, he will be the one to tell his own story. No person regardless of skin color should ever go through what slaves went through. To imagine how his aunt felt is unbearable, it is sad to think about the unnecessary misery many slaves went through. He may have owned them, but did not care about them, he could do what he pleased, and there was no law prohibiting that. This explains how their master had no heart or empathy for what he was destroying or who he was harming. Douglass had no knowledge of where and when his mother was buried.Īnother way Douglass uses parallelism is when he says, “No words, no tears, no prayers, from his gory victim, seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose”. No mother wanted to give up their child, but they were forcefully separated. Children were also not allowed to attend their mother’s burial and show respect.

This is one way that Douglass shows why slavery should be abolished mothers could not care for their own children. Frederick Douglass uses parallelism when saying “I was not allowed to be present during her illness, at her death, or burial”.

Narrative of the life of frederick