Frederick Douglass style of writing Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Frederick Douglass style of writing - Essay Example He suffered just as any other slave would in that period of time, from hunger, no bed to sleep on, barefoot, nothing to wear but a long shirt, no hint of affection and even separated from his three siblings. At the age of seven he moved to a couples place in Baltimore and he was more than happy for that. It was here in Baltimore that he learnt the English alphabets (Merriman). Douglass grew up to be an author, abolitionist and a lecturer and wrote three autobiographies during his lifetime; A Narrative on the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881). As he was a brilliant speaker he was asked by the American Anti-Slavery Society to deliver lectures at various places. He became famous and was recognized as one of the greatest black speakers in America. He was the foremost to declare himself a fugitive publicly and published many newspapers, one of them being an anti slavery newspaper called à ¢â‚¬ËœThe North Star’ and most of his causes were in the name of â€Å"Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", which was incorporated in the United States Declaration of Independence. He also served as an advisor to President Abraham Lincoln at the time of the Civil War and recommended many amendments to the American constitution, especially for the blacks. Douglass was a powerful administrator of human rights during that time in America and is still praised for his contributions against racial injustice (Merriman; Thomas). In this article we explore the amusing and powerful writing style of Frederick Douglass. Douglas was well spoken and thus his writing reflected it. Doubts had been raised about the credibility of his writing, whether he had written them or others had done it for him, but he proved that he was clean by introducing writings of well known abolitionists and personal friends, who describe his work. Two of them, William Llyod Garrison and Wendell Phillips were well known friends of his. Both of them were white, and they both of them mention the author and his credentials in the preface of the book, thereby shutting all the questions raised. Douglass also included dates in his writing and thus this proved the credibility of his writing (McNamara) Douglass had a definitive tone in his writing. It increased the rhetorical strategy and the ethos presented by him within his writing. His writing had a feel as if it was written for a definite section of the society, the upper middle class. At a time when books were not very cheap and was more of a luxury, Douglass had to establish himself on the same platform as the readers, instill in them a sense of all the wrong things happening in the society then, stir their emotions and thus influence their feelings so as to get a response in the way he wanted, that is a need for a change. He had a great choice of words sentence structures which set the tone for the extract. He awakens the reader to a new realization (Lampe, 81,101-102). Douglass’s writings have a pattern of objective and subjective styles of writing. He narrates in his autobiography, what he is and what he believed in. Objective style of writing uses facts to establish points, instead of opinions. Instances of his writing lacking emotions have also been seen. In his, at a particular point he describes Mr. Covey gave me a very severe whipping, cutting my back, causing the blood to run, and raising ridges on my flesh as large as my little finger (Moritz, 23). He describes such a scene, but then no negative emotions are portrayed by him towards Mr. Covey. Scenes