Literate Slave

Abstract

Frederick Douglass was an American slave that sought freedom through literacy. In his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, freed slave Fredrick Douglass shares his personal accounts with slavery in order to reveal the harsh truth slavery hides to the public. 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 became the most famous black man known as a slave who escaped, a statesman, and minister.

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass shows several instances in which his personal accounts of slavery are highlighted. These instances illustrate important realizations that Douglass makes concerning slavery, and about his own condition. 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. He states constant facts and details to support his character as a writer and as a slave.

Henry Gates explains how almost every aspect of his life has been interpreted and reinterpreted over and over again as the critics tried to discount Douglass and find inconsistencies. "Part of what distinguished Douglass from others who testified to the experience of enslavement was his astounding command of oratory. Today his speeches, edited by Mr. Blassingame, fill five volumes. His verbal facility was matched by a resonant baritone and a "burning eloquence," as Elizabeth Cady Stanton put it. Even to those inclined to doubt a published account as a counterfeit, the fervor of his own speech might well seem self-authenticating. And yet the black abolitionist Charles Lenox Remond was said to be as great a speaker. The difference was that Remond, like a number of others, peaked on the lectern, never emerging as a writer of distinction. By contrast, Douglass's book was unrivaled in its eloquence, combining a certain severity of tone with a profound mastery of figurative language. Here, for example, is his famous apostrophe to the ships in Chesapeake Bay: "You are loosened from your moorings, and are free; I am fast in my chains, and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly before the bloody whip! You are freedom's swift-winged angels, that fly around the world; I am confined in bands of iron! O that I were free! O, that I were on one of the gallant decks, and under your protecting wing! Alas! betwixt me and you, the turbid waters roll. Go on, go on. O that I could also go! Could I but swim! If I could fly! O, why was I born a man, of whom to make a brute!" (Henry Louis Gates, 1995, p. 3)

The very first chapter of the novel produces the first example: loss of identity. Many slaves had absolutely no concept of time, in terms of factual dates. Slaves were kept "ignorant" as to the facts of the real world, in most cases not even knowing the year of their birth, preventing the knowledge of a captive's 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 lacking what we may consider a normal childhood simply through the use of dates. 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, provided with a general idea as to how old he truly is, "I come to this from hearing my master say, sometime during 1835, I was about seventeen years old (Douglass, 2005, p. 19).

Adding to this already tarnished identity is the status of his parental figures. While Douglass somewhat got to know his mother, he never really had a father. His father, according to practically everyone, was a white man, ."..opinion was also whispered that my master was my father..." (Douglass, 2005, p. 20). Although it is true that he knew his mother, we see that they were separated while he was an infant and thereafter only met a total of four or five times. The consequences of not knowing who you really are may not have fazed Douglass much during his childhood. Drake stated that "Douglass also describes the destruction of his maternal connection, and reveals his belief that had he more contact with his mother, more memories of the "counsels" of her love,