Question

[100 POINTS]

Answer 1

Frederick Douglass’s 1845 Narrative continues to be a popular pedagogical text for high school and college curricula for the didactic reason that Douglass is a strong advocate for the benefits of reading and writing. Responding to the rumor that he might have been a well-educated freeman masquerading as a runaway slave, the educational elements of Douglass’s autobiography were partially intended to explain the source of his eloquence—tracing his beginning lessons in penmanship with neighborhood boys in Baltimore to his clandestine reading of The Columbian Orator. By including the letter he forged in his first escape attempt, he implies the message that literacy set him free. Setting a precedent for many African American literary figures who came after him, including Ralph Ellison’s fictionalized Invisible Man and the real-life President Barack Obama, Douglass fashioned a compelling explanation of his coming-to-voice, which even competes with, and eventually eclipses, the drama of his escape in the book’s final chapters.

Answer 2

Answer:

One rhetorical strategy used is a personification. An example from the text is  "At times I would rise up, a flash of energetic freedom would dart through my soul, accompanied with a faint beam of hope, that flickered for a moment, and then vanished." Another rhetorical strategy used is a rhetorical question. An example from the text is "Is there any God? Why am I a slave?" An assertion that is made is that he is the only slave in the world. "I am not the only slave in the world. Why should I fret? I can bear as much as any of them."

Explanation:

There are an abundance of rhetorical strategies used in the specific excerpt on edgenuity. This is what I put as my answer though.