Response to Douglass Post

Hi Eleanor. I hope you're feeling better. We miss you in class.

The first thing that I noticed about this section was the passioniate writing. The diction he uses like meanest, basest, cruel, cowardly, darkest, foulest is so powerful. Each word gets stronger and stronger. Good point. The sentences are in parallel structure, but almost like repeated notes in music, each sentence has more intensity. Also the words he uses are against most of the beliefs of the Age of Reason time, especially the cowardly. People were supposed to be strong and sensitive, and the slave owners were neither of these things. Good point, too. Notice the juxtaposition between these slaveholders and his ethos. Here we also see how he feels about religion. He feels like it is just an excuse for the slave owners to treat the slaves in the way they did, and that made him extremely anger. He also says just being around a community with religion, makes him miserable, because it is always used as a reason to why they can treat the slaves the way they do. Notice how this echoes his argument from the Appendix: Southern Christianity is not "true" Christianity. Another time the diction is very good is when he describes the slave owners actions as barbaric, and their deeds as infernal, no? which is turning the tables on the slave owners. They are always saying that the slaves are animals and not human, but now Douglass is saying No it is you guys who are the animals. Excellent job noticing the rhetorical reversal. Douglass is careful to not say all religion is bad, but just says southern religion is bad. Since his readers were in the north, he had to be careful not to insult them when he is trying to make a point. So this part of his writings was mainly making his agrument about how he feels that the Slave owners only use religion as a big excuse for the awful ways they treat there slaves and how it isn't right, because that is not the point of religion

You chose a great passage. That's a sign that you're keying in on major ideas and noticing the power in his writing. Good stuff.