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Witness and participant: Frederick Douglass's child.(William Lloyd Garrison, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass)

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From: Studies in American Fiction
Date: 20050922
Author:Levander, Caroline

When William Lloyd Garrison asks readers of Douglass's Narrative--"Reader, are you with the man-stealers in sympathy and purpose, or on the side of their down trodden victims?--he is invoking sentiment's most traditional device to elicit sympathy--that of direct address. (1) And when he introduces Frederick Douglass's Narrative, in particular, by telling the reader that "He who can peruse it without a tearful eye, a heaving breast, an afflicted spirit ... must have a flinty heart," Garrison is preparing us to encounter the Narrative as any sentimental reader would--indeed much as ...

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