to the american slave, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national…

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?

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

Answer:

To emphasize the hypocrisy of the celebration.

Brief Explanations:

Parallelism in this text repeats similar grammatical structures. By listing multiple aspects (e.g., "your celebration is a sham", "your boasted liberty, an unholy license"), it creates a rhythmic and forceful effect. This makes the reader focus on each point of hypocrisy (like celebrating while having slavery) more intensely. The repetition through parallelism drives home the idea that all these aspects (celebration, liberty claims etc.) are false and hypocritical when considering the existence of slavery.