Analytical paper: Martin Luther King/Douglass - Essay Example

Douglass establishes authority by showing brutality of masters like the instance where he recalls Captain Antony whipping Aunt Hester, a violent episode after the captain noticed that Hester had gone with a slave without the captain’s orders. Though Douglass implies the captain had sexual interest in Hester, who was beautiful, the captain strips her to waist, ties her and then whips her to appoint where blood drips to the floor. In this instance, the young Douglass became terrified and hides in a closed fearing he would be the next to be whipped; moreover, Douglas shows that the captain had two sons who had control over slaves, which cement’s his authority.

The first paragraph in his narrative, Douglass demonstrates double rationale for his work that includes a personal description as well as a communal argument. Douglass lets the reader in on his circumstances from his birthplace to the fact that he is not aware of his age and then continues to generalize from that experience that almost no slaves knew their true ages. Douglass takes the details in his experience to analyze it and points out that slave owners deliberately kept slaves ignorant, which was a tactic by whites in order to gain power over slaves.

He rhetorically uses his life experience as a normal slave experience and analytically points out from the experience how slavery works and makes a case against it. The main case in Douglass’ story is an antislavery fight, which analyses the establishment of slavery and shows its working and the reasons behind it. His analysis demystifies slavery revealing its brutality to many individuals who were not abolitionists, slavery was entirely a natural practice. Douglass developed a clear case that showed slavery to have been sustained not by natural supremacy of the whites, but rather by different concrete