Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass, An

5 Pages 1230 Words

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 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 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....