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Situational Irony In Frederick Douglass

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Situational Irony In Frederick Douglass
Douglass is afraid of speaking to others about his plan to escape due to absence of loyalty, but because of a shared interest in education, he learns to trust other slaves, whom he soon calls friends; this makes him realize that his idea of freedom is to be free from the control of slaveholders.
Slaves were forced to lie about their satisfaction with their masters. Therefore, slaves would compare and argue about whose master was more fair, rich, or kind. Douglass uses situational irony and explains, “It was considered as being bad enough to be a slave; but to be a poor man’s slave was deemed a disgrace indeed! (11).” Douglass says that in this quote, even though being a slave was terrible enough, having a poor master was even worse. What he

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