Liu 1 Evan Liu McConn AP Lang, Period 1 1/3/2022 Douglass vs. Coates Literary works from different eras frequently contain ideas that can be compared and contrasted. Two authors that wrote such works are Frederick Douglass and Ta-Nehisi Coates. When the horrors of slavery were still legal in the United States, Frederick Douglas, an enslaved person who later escaped, wrote a book in which he accounts his own experience in slavery and how he escaped. In the present 21st century, Ta-Nehisi Coates, an African American man, addresses his son in a letter and advises him on how to survive in racist white America. Although written in two completely different times in US history, Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and Coates’ Letter to My Son share parallel ideas that can be compared and contrasted. Within these parallel ideas that they share, Douglass and Coates both criticize the white man’s role in society, compare the stealing of African bodies, and write about the struggle for escape. Despite these similarities, Douglass writes to white slave owners of the north in the 19th century while Coates addresses his son in the present day. Douglass and Coates both overall criticize the role of white men in society through the use of different rhetorical choices. Douglass employs asyndeton in order to highlight the human rights violations by white slave masters in the industry of slavery while Coates juxtaposes cheery actions to gloomy crimes in order to call out the white men that commit those crimes. Douglass describes that one slave overseer is so cruel that “no words, no tears, no prayers” would “move his iron heart” (Douglass 5). Through this asyndeton, which does not use any conjunction to Liu 2 separate the list, Douglass draws the reader’s attention to the unforgivingness of white slaveholders. The cruel and unforgiving way Douglass describes slaveholders demonstrates the way white men violate human rights and take life, liberty, and freedom from enslaved Africans. Similarly, Coates criticizes how the belief in being white is not through “wine tastings and ice-cream socials, but rather through the pillaging of life, liberty, labor, and land” (Coates). Coates intentionally creates juxtaposition by placing two opposite situations next to each other to emphasize the fact that white men have gotten to where they are today at the cost of black people. This is similar to Douglass because Coates attacks the taking of life by white men as well. Although Douglass and Coates rely on two different rhetorical choices, both criticize how white men of the United States destroy the lives of black people not just in the days of slavery, but in the present as well. Moving further along the parallels of African Americans losing their livelihoods, Douglass and Coates both draw similarities in the way they describe how black bodies are constantly stolen, from slavery even to today. Douglass bitterly compares his enslavers to thieves through a metaphor at the same time Coates employs a paradox in order to bring to light the stealing of African bodies. Narrating about his enslavers, Douglass regards them as “successful robbers” who had “gone to Africa and stolen” them to be sold off into slavery (Douglass 35). Through this metaphor, Douglass describes the evils of how Africans were robbed from their homes and paints a new picture on the enslavers, which is that they are merely thieves. This theme of the robbing of African bodies repeats itself past the abolition of slavery, which Coates communicates using a paradox. He tells his son that his “father beat [him] as if someone might steal” him away, which he states was a common occurrence around them (Coates). This is a paradox because Coates writes a contradiction within his statement since if a father was trying to Liu 3 protect his son from being stolen, he would not beat him. Coates purposefully writes this way because he wants to tell his son that black parents have no way to prevent their children from being taken by the streets, jail, drugs, or guns. This parallels Africans being stolen from Africa to become slaves but in modern society. Although Coates uses a paradox instead of a metaphor, he still communicates to his audience the robbing of African bodies in a contemporary sense while Douglass does so in terms of slavery. In order to battle the constant stealing of bodies, Douglass and Coates focus on the struggle for escape, which is another one of their parallels. Douglass personifies ships in order to paint a picture of his desire to escape from slavery while Coates writes with heavy imagery to argue for his escape from injustice and towards the Dream. Douglass looks on to the ships in the water with envy that they are “freedom’s swift-winged angels that fly around the world” and declares that they “shall bear [him] into freedom” (Douglass 56-57). Douglass gives the ships humanlike traits so that the audience could visualize his inability to live freely. Throughout his time in slavery, Douglass has always looked for an opportunity to escape, and this moment further strengthens his will to find a chance. Similar to Douglass, Coates has an “irrepressible desire to unshackle [his] body and achieve the velocity of escape”, but from the “cosmic injustice, a profound cruelty” of present-day America, not slavery (Coates). Coates describes his current circumstances with such detail because he wants to draw attention to how badly he wants to be free of injustice. Parallel to Douglass, Coates is heavily invested in the escape to achieve the American dream while Douglass is looking to escape from slavery to freedom. By employing personification and heavy imagery, both Douglass and Coates succeed in communicating their struggles for escape to their audiences. Liu 4 Despite these similarities, Douglass and Coates write to two different audiences with two different intentions. Douglass uses litotes in order to address apathetic white men and bring an end to slavery while Coates alludes historically to a deeper meaning of his son’s name in order to advise him on how to grow up in the world. When describing the accounts of slave masters using enslaved women for their own sexual interests, Douglass recalls the amount of these instances happening as “cases not a few” (Douglass 3). This is litotes because by stating this phrase, Douglass tricks the audience into believing that the occasions are frequent by understating that they are few. Through this use of litotes, he instantly draws the white, apathetic audience into his argument. By bringing attention to the frequency of the horrific acts that were brought upon enslaved women, he convinces his audience that the institution of slavery is not just far away in the south, but omnipresent in the north as well. This pushes the apathetic white men to admit the horrors of slavery and take action against it. While Douglass addresses white apathetic men to take action, Coates alludes historically “Samori Touré, who struggled against French colonizers for the right to his own black body” (Coates). Coates informs his son that he was named after someone who struggled for his own black body to advise him that he himself must struggle in this world. Through the use of allusion, Coates writes to his son with advice on the world, which is that he must struggle for his own body. This differs from Douglass because whereas Coates writes for his son, Douglass addresses a bigger audience with a bigger call to action. Douglass uses litotes to excite his apathetic audience to take a stand against slavery while Coates alludes historically to where his son’s name came from to advise him on life. Using different rhetoric tactics, both Douglass and Coates criticize the white man’s role in society, compare the stealing of African bodies, and write about their struggles for escape. Apart from these parallels, Douglass writes to apathetic white men from the nineteenth century Liu 5 while Coates addresses his son in the present day. This illustrates that even though written in two completely different eras, Douglass’ narrative and Coates’ letter share parallel ideas that can be compared and contrasted. The parallel ideas that are compared and contrasted come from Douglass’ personal experience in enslavement in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and Coates’ advice for his son on how to survive in racist white America from Letter to My Son. Douglass and Coates contribute to the literary theme of works sharing parallel ideas that can be compared and contrasted. Liu 6 Works Cited Page Coates, Ta-Nehisi. “Letter to My Son.” The Atlantic, 4 July 2015, www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/tanahisi-coates-between-the-world-and-me /397619. Accessed 2 Dec. 2021. Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Anti-Slavery Office, 1845. MIHS Schoology: McConn. Accessed 16 Dec. 2021.
