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Aristotle conceived of three appeals for existence: ethos, pathos and logos, all of which are prevalent in all forms of writing, entertainment, speech, and generally life itself. Fredrick Douglass used all three appeals in writing his narrative as part of his rhetorical strategy to enlighten the public of both his life and his cause more than one hundred years ago. He specifically uses ethos, or persona, in three ways: to identify himself to the reader, to provide to the credibility of his statement and to evoke a need for change through his writing style. Fredrick Douglass grows from a slave boy to a freed man throughout Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, an American Slave and he uses this transition and identity to provide an outlet to which the reader can identify. Douglass first produces this with the absence of dates. Slaves were kept ignorant as to the facts of the real world, sometimes not even knowing the year of their birth, preventing the knowledge of a captives true age.
A birthday is something with which people can identify, as they are a celebrated part of our culture, especially to youth. Douglass here identifies himself as a human being almost lacking what we may consider a normal childhood simply through the use of dates. These are very important to our culture, counting down the days until your birthday, until Christmas. We identify ourselves by the dates which surround the events of our lives. Part of our identity is formed from dates and this was a privilege he was denied. He is, however, eventually provided a window of opportunity in many to not only learn dates, but gain a general feel for knowledge as well.
When the open door of learning that his mistress provided was permanently closed, he says, "it was a new and special revelation, explaining dark and mysterious things, with which my youthful understanding had struggled, but struggled in vain. I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty-to wit, the white mans power to enslave the black man. It was a grand achievement and I prized it highly. From that moment I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom" (Douglass 78). Douglass was learning and he didnt want to give it up. The reader is able to see how much he valued knowledge and his ironclad will to keep that door open.
In doing this, Douglass identifies himself as a growing child, forced down by circumstances beyond his control. He is growing, he is learning, he is maturing, and like a small child who asks question after question, he will not rest until his thirst for knowledge is quelled. As he gains more and more knowledge, his hunger and curiosity grow, and as he is satisfied in this aspect, his hunger for freedom matures. This becomes prevalent in his actions; as one of his Masters, Captain Auld put it, city life had almost ruined me for every good purpose and fitted me for everything which was bad (Douglass 99). His experience caused him to grow as a person and individual.
An old clich states that knowledge is power; Douglass had learned this first hand and was growing into a person with the courage to fight back and eventually claim his freedom. Throughout the book, Douglass presents himself as a person, forced to overcome incredible barriers to achieve that which many of us take for granted through the stories he tells. He first ensures that the reader can identify with him before going into the innate details of a particular tale, thus ensuring whatever emotion he is trying to evoke. It was also imperative that Douglass demonstrate his growth as a human being so that we would see him as just that, a person, not some animal to be easily dismissed. Because Douglass was so well spoken, and his autobiography so well written, the doubt surfaced in the mind of some audience members as to whether or not he had written the narrative or more to the extreme, whether or not he had actually been a slave.
Thus, his credibility was called into question. Douglass effectively resolves this tiff in the beginning of his book with the writings of well-known abolitionists and apparent personal friends William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips. Garrison goes right to the heart of the matter during the preface when he states that he attended an anti-slavery convention in Nantucket, at which it was my happiness to become acquainted with Fredrick Douglass, the writer of the following narrative (Douglass 33). Garrison is a respected, white member of society and his endorsement ensures a sense of truth for the intended reader that may otherwise have been absent in the time of the popular slave narrative. Phillip, also a white male, also added to the cause for which Douglass writes. "You come from that part of the country where we are told slavery appears with they fairest features. Let us hear, then, what it is at its best estate-gaze on its brightest side, if it has one; and then imagination may task her powers to add dark lines to this picture, as she travels southward to that (for the colored man) Valley of the Shadow of death, where the Mississippi sweeps long" (Douglass 44).
Phillips informs the reader that the instances, which are displayed throughout the narrative, are not examples of slavery at its worst, but rather at its best, inviting the reader to imagine the harsh reality that is slavery. These outside voices provide to the story in ways Douglass himself could not. He does, however do something very effective to boost his own credibility. He includes dates. Whenever he personally gained knowledge of specific dates, he includes them in the narrative inviting any skeptic to check the facts. Douglass tone and general style of writing also add to his message, thereby increasing the effectiveness of rhetorical strategy and of the ethos he is trying to present within the narrative.
His language, meaning the large words he uses, lead one to believe he is writing for the perhaps more intelligent upper-middle class. At this time, books were not exactly cheap, though invention of moveable type decreased the price of books and increased their availability; books were considered a luxury. It was necessary for Douglass to establish himself on the same plane as his audience, prove himself an intellectual equal in order to be taken seriously. By establishing himself equal to his audience, he is able to evoke emotion and thereby influence their feelings of a need for change. Douglass also effectively uses tone. He effectively uses word choice and sentence structure to evoke whichever emotion he seeks.
The reader is enraged, subdued, upset and yet enthralled throughout the entire narrative. Douglass is truly a master of words because one can almost picture Douglas in a crowded room, giving the speech to abolitionists and supporters alike. He effectively uses rhetorical strategy to give the reader and accurate account of the true evils of slavery. It is generally difficult for me to place myself in that of the intended audience because I grew up in a time much different from that of slavery, but he portrays the picture of slavery so vividly that I feel pity; I honestly feel like I finally understand what he went through.
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Research essay sample on Reader Can Identify Fredrick Douglass Narrative
