Narrative_Of_The_Life_Of_Frederick_Douglass,_An

Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass, An Aristotle conceived of three appeals for existence: ethos, pathos and logos, all of which are prevalent in all forms of writing, entertainment, speech, and generally life itself. Fredrick Douglass used all three appeals in writing his narrative as part of his rhetorical strategy to enlighten the public of both his life and his cause more than one hundred years ago. He specifically uses ethos, or persona, in three ways: to identify himself to the reader, to provide to the credibility of his statement and to evoke a need for change through his writing style. Fredrick Douglass grows from a slave boy to a freed man throughout Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, an American Slave and he uses this transition and identity to provide an outlet to which the reader can identify. Douglass first produces this with the absence of dates. Slaves were kept “ignorant” as to the facts of the real world, sometimes not even knowing the year of their birth, preventing the knowledge of a captive’s true age. A birthday is something with which people can identify, as they are a celebrated part of our culture, especially to youth. Douglass here identifies himself as a human douglass, reader, narrative, himself, slavery, knowledge, dates, writing, one, identify, throughout, through, slave, person, part, life, fredrick, evoke, effectively, audience, white, until, time, three, strategy, rhetorical, question, provide, picture, man, learning, growing, garrison, freedom, first