a strong rope, and led her to a stool...he made her get upon the stool, and ties her hands to the hook...he commenced to lay on the heavy cow-skin, and soon the warm, red blood (amid heart rending shrieks from her, and horrid oaths from him) came dripping to the floor." (Douglass 24).
             By going into details about his encounter with witnessing others being whipped and him being whipped himself, he reaches his purpose of making his readers appalled, therefore persuading his readers that there is no way that slavery can be justified. In the above quote, there is also a sense of imagery, which also helps Douglass's means of persuasion, by making his readers able to visualize the state of gloominess he is in.
             Along with rhetorical devices, Douglass's use of figure of speech gives meaning to his narrative. One technique that he uses widely in his narrative is alliteration: "...stillness of a summers Sabbath stood," this conveys Douglass's longing tone to be a freeman. He awaits freedom, in stillness.
             Douglass's autobiographical story bridges the gap between simple historical facts and the myths associated with American slavery. Scholarly writers have commented that Douglass' autobiography has become, "The representative text from the nineteenth-century African American literature for courses in American history of literature" (Bruce 32). The narrative is one of the most important texts to emerge from America during the nineteenth century. The book, "Defined a genre with its vivid depiction of a nightmarish slavery told with an impassioned rhetoricians tongue" (Virginia Quarterly Review 9).
             Frederick Douglass was a well-educated slave who wrote an intriguing book of his encounters with the hardships of slavery, while converting his personal feelings and anger into one passionate story. Despite being beaten within inches of his life countless times, Douglass found the will to publish the informative yet confidential
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