Journal #13

Michelle Romero
Eng. 48
Dr. Scott Lankford

Author: Frederick Douglass

"No words, no tears, no prayers, from his gory victim, seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose. The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped longest....and not until overcome by fatigue, would he cease to swing the blood-cotted cowskin" (2074).

This passage describes the brutality and horror of slavery. It describes more specifically, the way Mr. Plummer beat Douglass' aunt Hester, a slave. And as you can see, Douglass describes this fact in great detail.

It is important to know that Douglass' audience was made up of white people. Then we can understand why he writes the way he does. In the quote above, he repeats the word bloody and blood several times. In parts of the paragraph not quoted, he repeats this word a few more times. This repetition emphasizes the red, bloody goriness of slavery and paints a picture of hell for his audience. The significance of this act is to begin to change the minds of his audience to acknowledge the horrors of slavery.

Douglass uses sensory imagery to describe the fullness of the horror in a way that the audience will sympathize. For example, he says "the louder she screamed, the harder he whipped." In this line alone, the audience or reader can HEAR her screaming and HEAR the whip snapping. Essentially, they can HEAR her desperation.

Douglass also says that Mr. Plummer would whip even harder and longer right where the blood was running. This illustration is so real that as a reader, I can feel the pain of that. I can feel the sting it must leave on her skin when the open wound is beat over and over and over.

It is these sensory images that the makes the audience's heart jump in their throat. It is the raw exposer of these horrible truths that makes them hard to bear.