Common Performance Task Unit 4

Arrielle Guirand

Ms. Rodriguez

English 3

22 February 2016

Common Performance Task Unit 4

        In the twenty first century, society has changed because of the form of freedom.  We are given the rights to express our beliefs without the ridicule and the oppressive views of others. Many others before us had fought for this freedom we have.  Like Fredrick Douglass, an ex-slave and an anti-slavery abolitionist or Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was a women’s right activist and an abolitionist, were both influential people who sought to gain the freedom that we deserved. But it came with much brutality until we were given those rights.

        Fredrick Douglass was an anti-slavery abolitionist.  During the time of the Civil War, he made a public speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” where he tells his audience that what it meant to celebrate the fourth of July for slaves.  Slaves were are not free, they were not independent from other, and they did not have their individual rights.  Douglass use of ethos, pathos, and logos had contributed to his speech making it effective and grabbing his audience attention.  With such allusion and metaphors it helped give his audience imaginations of the experiences that slave were being put through.  He also has them relate their feelings about Jewish people who were oppressed in ancient times.  Fredrick Douglass speech had opened up a new mind set for his audience. His speech had effectively changed the way for society. It expanded to a broader idea that slaves are as well the same as free people and should be given the liberty to live amongst others freely.

        Elizabeth Cady Stanton, another influential person who had fought for freedom.  Stanton was a women’s right activist and an abolitionist.  She believed that women had as much equal rights as men and that we women’s should not lower our standards for what is etiquette in social society.  Stanton drew ideas from the Declaration of independence to for the Declaration of Sentiments.  The form of parallelism is used many times in her speech to emphasize of what women’s ability are to man by saying “he has” several times.