“No words, no tears, no prayers from his gory victim, seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose. The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped the longest.”
This line is found on page 11 as he describes one of his master's sick, cruel punishments. When first reading over this line, it sounds just like another ploy at trying to inform the unaware citizens of the time the truth about life on a plantation. If the line is read multiple times, it sounds almost poetic. The words used and how they are arranged gives the line a certain lyrical rhythm. Analyzing this use of poetry closer can give a definite insight to what Douglass was trying to get across to his reader's.
The first three nouns we read all have “no” in front of them, “No words, no tears, no prayers...” This repetition was used by Douglass stresses the fact that the master showed no mercy to anyone for any reason. There was no way to escape the fate of the woman expressed in the line. Just a few words after, we see the word “victim” being used to describe what the woman was to the master. This is an odd word to use in any sense because a human never really has a “victim”. Douglass' use of this word shows how brutal the master's were and how little respect was shown to the slaves.
