"Ain't I A Woman?"
Sojourner Truth, in her speech "Ain't I a Woman?"(Truth) challenges the idea that everyone is treated fairly, especially colored women. Truth's purpose is to establish the fact that even though she is a woman, she is not treated like everyone else. She implies that it is because of her history, gender, or race. Truth does not hold back; she says what needs to be said. She adopts a serious tone to appeal to similar experiences of her women's rights activists.
Truth’s use of pathos is revealed as she tries to make the listeners sympathetic to troubles that she had to live with in her time. She tries to make the listeners feel injustice when she talks about not having a good place to live. In addition, she makes the listeners feel sorrow and grief when she speaks of not have enough to eat, and being lashed by her slave owner. However, the most important example of pathos is when she speaks about seeing her children sold off and how "no one heard [her] cries except Jesus"(Truth).
Truth's repetition of the rhetorical question "Ain't I a woman?"(Truth) adds to the effect of disconnect from the rest of society. She states that she is as much a woman as the next. She makes the listeners feel as if she has been rejected. She uses her own body to show that she has endured harder times than most of the respected women around the country. She points out the scars on her arms to point out that she has worked on a plantation and been whipped. She explains that she has given birth to thirteen children in her own life. She pleads her case; she never receives any help that the white women get. She has seen the help others receive and the men that help the others do not pay attention to her. Truth refers to this line to connect with her audience and some of the troubles they might be going through.
Her use of the Christian faith really sets a serious tone in the entirety of the speech. She starts out using antithesis in calling her audience “children”...