Douglass’s powerful story. A story that is still alive.

Frederick Douglass’s story is a narrative, right? Yes, but the power within it makes it more than just a narrative, but is a strong representation of history. 

In one of Frederick Douglass's narrative works "The Norton Anthology of African American Literature," he uses a diverse set of literary devices to counter pro-slavery arguments and persuade his readers to become active abolitionists. Some of these include Imagery, Connotations, Word Order, and Metaphors.

Douglass uses imagery to captivate the reader and secondhand experience what he went through with words that are descriptive and produce a vivid image of what he felt and saw. For example, on page 58, Douglass recounts the horrific way an overseer of the plantation treated his aunt “The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped the longest he describes what he experienced with words that allows the readers to understand both visually and sentimental. Another way is by carefully choosing words with connotations. He uses words like "enslaved" instead of "owned," "oppressed" instead of "controlled," and "freedom" instead of "escape." When he uses these words instead of other ones, he creates powerful connotations that reinforce his strong demeanor to abolish slavery. 

Douglass also arranges words and phrases to make key points and create emotional responses. He places powerful descriptive words when recalling his experiences in plantations and the horrors that happened in them at the beginning or end of sentences for maximum impact. Douglass successfully delivers the urgency of his message and compels readers to confront the horrors of slavery with the usage of word order. Another tool he uses is the usage of Metaphors. A metaphor that helps create the injustice tone is when he implies that their “masters” did not care or even look at them as human when he wrote, “By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs…” As you can see by the owners not giving them any information and not even a birth date, it showcases the injustices and inhumane level at which they were treated.