Frederick Douglass Close Reading

On page 24, the paragraph starting with the line, "In the same book," and ending with the line "and moved in every storm" is a very power paragraph where Douglass talks of the pain that reading brought him. He talks about how the documents were very interesting to him. He says, "The reading of these documents (one of Sheridan's speeches on Catholic emancipation) enabled me to utter my thoughts, and to meet the arguments brought forward to sustain slavery; but while they relieved me of one difficulty, they brought on another even more painful than the one of which i was relieved. The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers." This is an extrememly powerful couple sentences that really begin to express how much more Douglass is starting to hate slavery. He now starts to realize that with the power of reading, he can take down arguments taht others bring up in the realm of how slavery is a good thing. Douglass really starts to realize that with reading he has knowledge, and with that knowledge he gains the power to become a very influential abolitionist later in his life. Later on in the quoted section, Douglass really uses parallel structure to emphasize how much pain the reading brought him, although the knowledge was beneficial, and how much he began to hate slave owners, his in particular, for the brutality that they subjected him to. He talks of how reading really opens his eyes to the brutality and makes him despise it that much more. Douglass goes on to emphasize the cruelty of slavers by comparing them to robbers who stole the slaves from Africa. This metaphor does a very good job of showing how slavers aren't people who should be making money like they do. His point is that lik robbers, slavers too should be tried and jailed for their crimes. Not paid and begged for more slaves. After his comparison of slavers to robbers, Douglass has an epiphany. He realizes that this hatred for slavery that was strengthened even more by the knowledge of reading, was the exact reason why his master didn't want him reading. He realizes that to his master, an ignorant slave is much more valuable and manageable than on full of knowledge. The knowledge that Douglass has gained from his reading make him more likely to rebel or run away than when he was ignorant. He does a great job of emphasizing this point with the metaphor that slavery is like a pit, and reading had opened his eyes to the fact that slavery is a horrible pit, and though he was thankful he had the knowledge to realize this, reading also showed him that there was no ladder he could use to get out of the pit. He was stuck in slavery forever. His freedom was so close that he could taste it, bu tit was seemingly unreachable at the same time. Douglass finishes off this paragraph using parallel structure to tell how freedom was in everything he saw, touched or heard but although Douglass was so close to it, he could never reach freedom, and that is what tormented him. The knowledge that reading had brought him was like torture because although it opened his eyes to how close freedom was, he knew that it was a very unlikely, seemingly unreachable goal. This section is rooted deeply in pathos and is trying to get the audience, mostly white women, to feel pity for him. He makes a deeper connection with the audience, allowing him to persuade them to his realm of thinking, in which slavery is terrible.