The Use of Chiasmus to Highlight the Irony of Slavery in Narrative of t

The Use of Chiasmus to Highlight the sarcasm of Slavery in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass According to Barton and Hudsons Contemporary result to Literary Terms, a chiasmus is a rhetorical scheme that is particularly strong in creating raillery through the reversal of accepted truths or beaten(prenominal) ideas (189). Frederick Douglass uses the chiasmus throughout his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave to highlight the irony of buckle downrys existence in a country that was built upon the ideals of liberty. Throughout his autobiography, we witness several specific instances of chiasmus that cause the reader to pause and focus on the loony toons that Douglass is trying to make. Each chiasmus is placed in an important point of the text (and, therefore, an important point of Douglass life) and calls attention to that passages significance.Let us stick with what is, perhaps, the most famous Douglass quotation You have seen how a man was make a slave you shall see how a slave was made a man (64). This sentence serves as the turning point, the climax, of both Douglass narrative and his life. Up until that point, throughout his entire life, the world had been busy making him a slave. From the present moment he was born to a slave mother (even though his male parent was white), the forces of slavery had been suffocating his humanity. When he was forcibly separated from his mother, he disoriented the human closeness of family. When he helplessly witnessed his aunt being savagely beaten and was subjected to repeated beatings himself, he lost the human sense of pride. And, when he was denied education and literacy, he lost the human ability to obtain knowledge. In all of these ways, society turned Frederick Douglass, a man, int... ...ee nation. Douglass marks his transformation from slave to man with a chiasmus just before his fight with Mr. Covey. He utilise two more to highlight events that led up to that climacti c good afternoon one contrasting the will of the master and that of the slave, and other contrasting the freedom of the ships with Fredericks own bondage in slavery. Finally, Douglass uses a chiasmus to highlight the disparity amidst the free, near-utopian North, and the slaveholding, harsh South. His masterful use of the rhetorical tool of chiasmus allowed Frederick Douglass to expertly screening the irony of slavery to an entire nation.Works CitedBarton, Edwin J. and Glenda A. Hudson. A Contemporary take place to Literary Terms. Boston Houghton Mifflin, 2004.Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. New York Barnes & impressive Classics, 2003.