Rhetorical Purpose Of Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave
In the passage from the autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, after the first two paragraphs there is a change in the rhetorical mode of the passage from narration to apostrophe, which reinforces the rhetorical purpose of the passage which is to show how horrible slavery was and how much freedom was desired by the slaves.
The change in the third paragraph of this passage is accomplished through the use of several stylistic elements different from those used in the first two paragraphs. In the first two paragraphs of this passage Douglass uses the narrative technique to explain the situation he was in and his longing to be free as well stylistic elements as repetition and parallel sentences to support his rhetorical purpose of showing how horrible slavery was. In contrast, in the third paragraph Douglass uses apostrophe and stylistic elements such as personification, metaphor, repetition, and loose sentences as well as rhetorical questions and exclamatory sentences to reinforce his rhetorical purpose in this passage. The use of apostrophe adds emotional intensity to the third paragraph as this gets the attention and the sympathy of the reader as
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