...spoken out about their lack of civil rights. Even with the oppression she was born into, escaped slave and prominent abolitionist Sojourner Truth spoke out against her situation, and hoped to enlighten the antithetic audience about the reality of being anything but a white American male in a racist society. In the eye-opening speech, “Ain’t I a Woman?” by Sojourner Truth, given at the Akron Women’s Convention, she highlights the oppression she has faced from American society to her antithetic audience by effectively utilizing the rhetorical devices of repetition, juxtaposition, parallelism, and imagery. By effectively instilling repetition and juxtaposition, the tragic reality of a minority’s life is unveiled. Truth delineates the disparity between women of different race as she explains, “… women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches… Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles…” Truth juxtaposes that while she is a woman, as a former slave, her treatment is unfathomable compared to that of a white woman who is treated like a princess by the men who have oppressed blacks like her. Because she is...
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...Public activist and movement leader, Sojourner Truth, in her speech “Ain’t I a woman” (1851) argues intensely that women and especially black women are being treated wrong and unfair and that things need to change. She first supports her claim by providing an example of how she is not being treated fairly and a metaphor showing that. Then she talks about how slavery is wrong and how it has affected her and finally she talks about how blacks and women alike are looked upon as not as smart, or as skillful as white men. She then provides an example of how what the men say are wrong and proves herself right. Rights purpose is to show that women are just as good as men and deserve to be treated equally and fairly. She speaks with a very serious and somewhat annoyed tone for the people of America....
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