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READING ANALYSIS #1 NAME_________________________

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass PER ______ DATE _____________

Chapter VIII

CONTEXT (Explain what is happening at this point in the text and the overall significance of the passage)

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PASSAGE: Highlight key words and images, highlight and identify rhetorical devices. Take notes in the
margins as you annotate the passage.


5 If any one thing in my experience, more than "Gone, gone, sold and gone
another, served to deepen my conviction of the To the rice swamp dank and lone,
infernal character of slavery, and to fill me with Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings,
unutterable loathing of slaveholders, it was their Where the noisome insect stings,
base ingratitude to my poor old grandmother. She 45 Where the fever-demon strews
10 had served my old master faithfully from youth to Poison with the falling dews,
old age. She had been the source of all his wealth; Where the sickly sunbeams glare
she had peopled his plantation with slaves; she had Through the hot and misty air:--
become a great grandmother in his service. She had Gone, gone, sold and gone
rocked him in infancy, attended him in childhood, 50 To the rice swamp dank and lone,
15 served him through life, and at his death wiped From Virginia hills and waters--
from his icy brow the cold death-sweat, and closed Woe is me, my stolen daughters!"
his eyes forever. She was nevertheless left a slave--
a slave for life--a slave in the hands of strangers; The hearth is desolate. The children, the
and in their hands she saw her children, her unconscious children, who once sang and danced in
20 grandchildren, and her great-grandchildren, divided, 55 her presence, are gone. She gropes her way, in the
like so many sheep, without being gratified with the darkness of age, for a drink of water. Instead of the
small privilege of a single word, as to their or her voices of her children, she hears by day the moans
own destiny. And, to cap the climax of their base of the dove, and by night the screams of the hideous
ingratitude and fiendish barbarity, my grandmother, owl. All is gloom. The grave is at the door. And
25 who was now very old, having outlived my old 60 now, when weighed down by the pains and aches of
master and all his children, having seen the old age, when the head inclines to the feet, when the
beginning and end of all of them, and her present beginning and ending of human existence meet, and
owners finding she was of but little value, her frame helpless infancy and painful old age combine
already racked with the pains of old age, and together--at this time, this most needful time, the
30 complete helplessness fast stealing over her once 65 time for the exercise of that tenderness and
active limbs, they took her to the woods, built her a affection which children only can exercise towards
little hut, put up a little mud-chimney, and then a declining parent--my poor old grandmother, the
made her welcome to the privilege of supporting devoted mother of twelve children, is left all alone,
herself there in perfect loneliness; thus virtually in yonder little hut, before a few dim embers. She
35 turning her out to die! If my poor old grandmother 70 stands-- she sits--she staggers--she falls--she
now lives, she lives to suffer in utter loneliness; she groans--she dies --and there are none of her children
lives to remember and mourn over the loss of or grandchildren present, to wipe from her wrinkled
children, the loss of grandchildren, and the loss of brow the cold sweat of death, or to place beneath
great-grandchildren. They are, in the language of the sod her fallen remains. Will not a righteous God
40 the slave's poet, Whittier,-- 75 visit for these things?
 The attached passage comes from the 1845 autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An
American Slave. Read the passage carefully, noting elements such as imagery, diction, syntax, and selection of
detail. Then, write a well-developed introduction and one body paragraph analyzing how Douglass uses
rhetorical strategies to convey his message.

The Arch Method

Possible Responses:

h at…
W

How…

Prominent use of rhetorical
devices/strategies in the
beginning of the passage:

-Diction
-Figurative Language
-Selection of Detail
-Imagery
-Structure
-Syntax
-Appeals to Emotion
-Appeals to Logic
-Author’s Ethos
-Other
Prominent use of rhetorical
devices/strategies in the
middle of the passage:

-Diction
-Figurative Language
-Selection of Detail
-Imagery
-Structure
-Syntax
-Appeals to Emotion
-Appeals to Logic
-Author’s Ethos
-Other
Prominent use of rhetorical
devices/strategies at the end
of the passage:

-Diction
-Figurative Language
-Selection of Detail
-Imagery
-Structure
-Syntax
-Appeals to Emotion
-Appeals to Logic
-Author’s Ethos
-Other