Literacy and chiasmus in Douglass’s Narrative of the Life Slavery in a history was a time period where humans did not treat other as humans, just because of the color of the skin and their education. To support this white people in the new land (America) used great religious texts such as Bible to prove that what they are doing is part of nature and that’s what is also written in text that is foundation of great religion of that time. The education point that was used by the whites for slavery was later proved wrong by many great autobiographies, one of them is Narrative life of Frederick Douglas. Even though Douglas was a slave he was able to prove that if one has interest and support, anyone can be educated. We can see how he educates himself …show more content…
Through his effective use of symbols, chiasmus and motifs Frederick Douglas shows his personal development, confidence in himself (self-reliance) and the destructive force that corrupts the slaveholder and brutalize the slave. Slavery by itself was a great torture for the slaves by their masters. There are couple of motifs that Douglas uses throughout his Narrative. The major ones are Victimization of Female slaves and the treatment of slaves as property. In the beginning of his narrative Douglas shows how females are the great of the slavery. The biggest harm a torturer can do to a female is to take away her child. Douglas himself was kept away from her mother as well as from his grandmother, two people who he would be most attached to as his father was a slave owner. “I never saw my mother, to know her as such, more than four or five times in my life; and each of these times was very short in duration, and at night.” (2) It is very hard for any female to see their child only four or five times in their life time. Another instance where female becomes victim as slave is when his grandmother is left in the woods to die. “And, to cap the climax of their base ingratitude and fiendish barbarity, my grandmother, who was now very old, having outlived my