frederick douglass ethos pathos logos essay

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Frederick Douglass: Ethos, Pathos, Logos

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Ethos: establishing credibility, pathos: evoking emotions, logos: appealing to reason.

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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass : Ethos, Pathos, & Logos

Activity Overview

Douglass’s narrative is more than an interesting account of his difficult life. Written two decades before slavery was outlawed, the narrative was intended as a powerful argument against slavery. In making this argument, Douglass employs a number of effective rhetorical devices , including the appeals of ethos, pathos, and logos . Storyboarding can help students concretely identify examples of these and demonstrate understanding not only of Douglass’s argument, but also of the craftsmanship behind the argument. For this three-square storyboard, have students identify and depict an example of each of the three Aristotelian components of rhetoric. Below each depiction, they should explain their reasoning and/or include other written examples as space allows.

Ethos, Pathos, Logos in the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Douglass makes a convincing argument due to his well-written, logical account. He uses sophisticated vocabulary along with specific, verifiable names and geographic locations. He writes fairly and gives credit where it is due in order to avoid accusations of unjust bias.

Douglass describes the cruel beatings slaves received in vivid detail. His eloquent language inspires pity in the reader. His accounts are most powerful when he describes witnessing the abuse of others as a terrified child. He writes, "No words, no tears, no prayers, from his gory victim, seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose...I was quite a child, but I remember it. I shall never forget it whilst I remember anything."

Douglass's narrative begins with a preface by well-known abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and a letter from abolitionist Wendell Phillips. These respected men act as witnesses, testifying to Douglass's good character. Douglass also builds his credibility by refusing to believe in superstitions and depicting himself as a hard-working, intelligent, church-going Christian.

Template and Class Instructions

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Student Instructions

Create a storyboard that shows examples of ethos, pathos, and logos from the text.

• Click "Start Assignment".
• Identify one example of each rhetorical strategy: ethos, pathos, and logos.
• Type the example into the description box under the cell.
• Illustrate the example using any combination of scenes, characters, and items.

Lesson Plan Reference

Grade Level 6-12

Difficulty Level 5 (Advanced / Mastery)

Type of Assignment Individual or Partner

Type of Activity: The Rhetorical Triangle: Ethos, Pathos, Logos

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Frederick Douglass

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Frederick Douglass Pursuasive Techniques: Ethos, Pathos and Logos

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Persuading the People In today’s schools, children grow up knowing about the wonderful writings of famous authors, such as William Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll, and Jane Austen. These authors were phenomenal story tellers, but were not the only great writers of the past. These writers were popular for many different reasons, but one trait that they all shared was their ability to truly make the reader feel how they felt and believe what they believed.

This selective group of authors accomplished this by using a variety of persuasive techniques, including what Aristotle called “pathos,” “logos” and “ethos.” Many writers of the past used these same techniques to create very powerful arguments, but never became well known. This could be due to the heavy racism shown worldwide for at least the last five centuries. William Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll, and Jane Austen were all white and British, which were considered top of the “food chain.”

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However, a few writers of less desirable races did become popular, for example, Frederick Douglass. He was an African American slave, born and whipped in America. Douglass gained freedom in his early adult years and with his little education, wrote the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Frederick Douglass used logical, emotional, and ethical appeals in his personal narrative to create a very effective argument against slavery.

Since Frederick Douglass was unable to support his argument with data and research, his logical appeals were often from common knowledge. It is common knowledge that the bond of mother and child begins even before birth and is very essential for growth until the end of the toddler years. Douglass described the slave owners separating children from their mothers before they even reached the end of their first year. As for why, he said, “I do not know, unless it be to hinder the development of the child’s affection toward its mother, and to blunt destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child. This is the inevitable result.” (Douglass 2). The lack of this kind of psychological growth is harmful on any person. Since Frederick Douglass used what he knew to abolish slavery, his logic comes from his own experience. Next, many people have based their lives and logic over biblical views.

Slavery was justified as good since it was mentioned in the Bible. Douglass discussed that white men would produce children from a female slave in order to make more slaves because biblically, this was ok, and great for their wallets! Since the Bible claimed that slavery was brought on when God cursed Ham, Douglass rubuttled, “If the lineal descendants of Ham are alone to be scripturally enslaved, it is certain that slavery at the south must soon become unscriptural; for thousands are ushered into the world, annually, who, like myself, owe their existence to their white fathers” (3). Ham’s descendants were meant to be blackened slaves; therefore, it was portrayed that all black people should be enslaved. Even though this is biblical logic that slavery was right for black people, the mulatto children being created were simply not black, making their argument not valid. This twisted logic done by some Christians was not justifiable and showed how slavery should be abolished. Moving on, Douglass reiterated that his reasoning against the bible was not to slander it, but rather to connect where slavery was misinterpreted. Douglass stated,

“I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the region of this land Christianity” (71). Douglass does not think it was logical at all to entitle the south as a Christian atmosphere in the biblical aspect that slavery is so highly justified. They viewed as slavery was right because the bible said it was, yet they would rape women in order to gain more slaves. The whole aspect of slavery from the bible has been contorted to fit the wants of the slave owners. Douglass believed that this selfish act was another reason why slavery should be abolished. The Biblical views being misconstrued, the bonds of mother and son being mutated, and the morals of Christianity logically supported his argument that slavery needed to be abolished.

Frederick Douglass used common knowledge of how humans feel to force the reader to connect on an emotional level. When he was young, he witnessed several beatings. Douglass remembered, “It was a most terrible spectacle. I wish I could commit to paper the feelings with which I beheld it” (4). Not even being able to communicate his own feelings shows that the experience was extremely traumatic. The reader can think of the many hardships they themselves has been through and would not want other people to feel the same indescribable pains. Frederick Douglass connects to the reader in other ways. Knowing that most people can relate to a mother-child relationship, Douglass mentioned the rare occasions he spent with his mother. After her passing, he recalled, “I received the tidings of her death with much the same emotions I should have probably felt at the death of a stranger” (2).

While comparing that relationship to the relationship they have had with their own mother, the reader feels empathy towards the slaves because they know this lack of this kind of a bond is not right for people. Douglass tugged at the heart of the reader by mentioning another special family bond, brotherhood. Many of the slaveholders had mullato children, who became slaves. Douglass explains that even though it sounds cruel, it was better for the masters to sell their own mixed children than to keep them because otherwise, “he must not only whip them himself, but must stand by and see one white son tie up his brother, of but a few shades darker complexion than himself, and ply the gory lash to his naked back” (3). In a perfect world, most people would say that siblings should be equals, so hearing that a person that is possibly still a child is forced to beat their own sibling, their equal, could absolutely devastate the reader. By making the reader emotional, Douglass forces the reader to realize that slavery could not continue without making all people, including slave owners, emotionally upset.

Another support Douglass used was his ethical appeals to prove his credibility in abolishing slavery. Since Douglass was raised in slavery, he experienced many traumatizing events. Upon recalling his first memory of the cruelty of slavery, he remembered, “I was quite a child, but I well remember it. I never shall forget it whilst I remember any thing. It was the first of a long series of such outrages, of which I was doomed to be a witness and a participant” (4). Since Frederick Douglass lived through this kind of slavery, and the reader has most likely not, the reader has to trust him when he was how traumatic it is to go through, and that no person should have to go through it. Even though people have different beliefs, most can agree to some of the same morals. One of those common morals is that it is better to tell the truth.

Douglass recalled a time where that was not the case, “He was immediately chained and handcuffed; and thus, without a moment’s warning, he was snatched away, and forever sundered, from his family and friends, by a hand more unrelenting than death. This is the penalty of telling the truth, of telling the simple truth, in answer to a series of plain questions” (11). It is understandable being punished for lying, but being punished for telling the truth is simply unjustifiable. Another common moral, that was not always shared in those times, was that it was wrong to beat and torture someone. Douglass saw this happen several times though. He described the overseer, “I have known him to cut and slash the women’s heads so horribly, that even master could be enraged at his cruelty” (3). Slaves were not the only ones to find this kind of treatment wrong. Even though the master himself would beat slaves, he knew that beating someone nearly to death was just too far. It seems that even the cruelest people can feel remorse.

In summary, Frederick Douglass did a good job executing his argument using logos, pathos, and ethos. By using common knowledge, all readers can understand from a logical side why slavery was wrong. His use of emotional appeals really tied in the reader emotionally and made them feel attached to the argument. When Douglass brought ethics into the argument, it became almost impossible to argue that he was wrong. Because Frederick Douglass has been able to see and experience slavery personally, his dedication to the subject helped in creating a remarkably effective argument.

Works Cited Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass. New York: Dover Publications, 1995. Print.

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The Narrative of Frederick Douglass

Frederick douglass.

Douglass cultivates an ethos as a believable witness to slavery by drawing attention to himself as a frequent observer of cruelty. One instance occurs in Chapter 2, when he describes Mr. Severe:

Mr. Severe was rightly named: he was a cruel man. I have seen him whip a woman, causing the blood to run half an hour at the time; and this, too, in the midst of her crying children, pleading for their mother’s release. Cite this Quote

Here, Douglass is careful to emphasize not just the fact of Mr. Severe's cruelty, but also the fact that he has  seen  him being cruel. Douglass also emphasized his status as an eyewitness in the previous chapter, in which he described what happened to Aunt Hester. From his hiding place in a closet, he actually saw the terrible beating she endured. His emotional account of what happened was not an exaggerated attempt to imagine on the page what brutal abuse might be like. Instead, it was a straightforward testimony of a true experience.

Douglass needed to convince readers that he was an authority on the subject of enslavement in the South. Indeed, Douglass wrote his narrative in part to convince Northerners that he truly had a personal history as an enslaved person to back up the claims he had been making about the need for abolition. Much of what went on on plantations was a secret before Douglass wrote about it because enslavers carefully kept information from getting out. Vigorous censorship was par-for-the-course in the antebellum South, and enslavers who controlled the vast majority of the wealth were careful not to allow very many schools to pop up. The literacy rate even among white people in the antebellum South was far lower than it was in the North. The slow spread of information in written form helped enslavers hide their shameful behavior and cultivate their reputations in the North as respectable neighbors. Without written evidence, they could claim that their detractors were slandering them. Douglass thus needed to work against an entire social infrastructure that was set up to encourage white Northerners to trust Southern enslavers and distrust anyone who spoke too badly of them. By not only describing his own direct experiences with violence, but also describing what it is like to watch others experience violence, Douglass becomes the Northern reader's eyes on the plantation. He is clear that he is not reporting hearsay, nor is he focusing exclusively on the ways he has been hurt. Rather, he is reporting direct observations of a brutal social system. Douglass thus convinced readers to trust him as an eyewitness to a world they had never seen.

In Chapter 10, Douglass fights Mr. Covey for a grueling two hours, and he wins. In his reflection on the fight, Douglass uses ethos to win patriotic white readers over to his side:

This battle with Mr. Covey was the turning-point in my career as a slave. [...] It was a glorious resurrection, from the tomb of slavery, to the heaven of freedom. My long-crushed spirit rose, cowardice departed, bold defiance took its place; and I now resolved that, however long I might remain a slave in form, the day had passed forever when I could be a slave in fact. I did not hesitate to let it be known of me, that the white man who expected to succeed in whipping, must also succeed in killing me. Cite this Quote

Douglass is emphasizing that whatever his legal classification or "form" is (human vs. property), his spirit will not be crushed. "In fact," he writes, any attempt to classify him as less than human is invalid because his human spirit persists. Douglass's language here evokes American revolutionary rhetoric. He positions himself as someone with a "long-crushed spirit" that raises itself up to "defy" the "tomb of slavery." The Declaration of Independence and other documents and speeches from American revolutionaries had similarly used language of defiance against an oppressor. The idea of resurrection from a tomb, as if Douglass is Christ, aligns this defiance with good in the eyes of a highly Christian readership.

Douglass's patriotic language goes beyond winning over the sympathy of proud Christian Americans. He uses this language to break apart the idea that he or any person can be property in the first place. In the American legal system, the institution of slavery rested on John Locke's philosophical idea that enslavement did not violate a person's free will because an enslaved person could choose to die by suicide. Specifically, Locke argued, an enslaved person could choose to provoke an enslaver through defiance as a way of getting the enslaver to murder them. Douglass is pushing back on this logic. He is arguing that while an enslaver who "succeed[ed] in whipping" him into total submission would have to kill him, his defiance itself is about the kind of life he deserves, not about the right to die. For him, defiance is motivated by the belief that he does not deserve the abuse or the death that might result from it. Whereas Locke claimed that enslaved people were free to choose death, Douglass argues that enslaved people begin to be free when they realize that Locke is a liar, and the entire system is a con cheating them out of their fundamental rights.

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