Question

To [the American slave], your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy – a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.

—Frederick Douglass

Why does Douglass use parallelism?

Answer 1

Parallelism (here, repeated grammatical structure and repeated "your") gives Douglass’s sentence force, clarity, and musicality so his accusation lands harder. Specifically:

- It stresses the contrast between what Americans claim and what they actually are — each laudatory noun ("celebration," "liberty," "prayers," etc.) is immediately matched with a bluntly negative label, exposing hypocrisy.
- The repeated pattern builds momentum and intensity; the list accumulates until the indictment feels overwhelming and inescapable.
- The rhythm and repetition make the passage memorable and rhetorically powerful, which strengthens its persuasive appeal (pathos).
- By echoing the cadences of sermons and public addresses, the structure also mocks religious and patriotic rhetoric while turning those forms against the nation’s moral failings.

In short, Douglass uses parallelism to sharpen his critique, amplify its emotional impact, and make the hypocrisy unmistakable.