The young woman near the back of the classroom referred to her notebook before answering. “One obvious thing that separates them is Douglass’s firsthand knowledge. He was a slave on a plantation and he witnessed the horrors.”

“Exactly,” Victoria said, jabbing her marker in the young woman’s direction. “We have a primary source of information that’s incredibly candid and, at points, gruesome. Someone tell me about Douglass’s writing style that drives his point home.”

“The events are shocking,” said a young man near the door. “But they’re really detailed. Like, he’s cataloging the facts in a really clinical way.”

Victoria nodded.

“It’s like even though it happened to him, he has to take a step back and write it objectively,” said another student.

“You’re both right,” Victoria replied, stepping away from the podium. She strolled down the center aisle of her class and addressed her students. “These horrors are catalogued, as Jeremy pointed out, in a way that would shock us. But as a writer, imagine sitting down to list all of the tragedy in your life... How do you do it? Is there a way to shut off part of your brain to write, or what?”

Hannah jumped back in with her opinion. “I don’t know if you’re shutting off part of your brain. I don’t think anyone can do that and write what Douglass has written.” The young woman searched for the words. “He knew what he was doing, because this feels like enough pathos to draw a reader in, but he backs it up with his logos.”

Victoria smiled. Bingo. “So you’re saying he’s playing a delicate balancing act?”

Hannah nodded. “Right.”

“Does he have to?” asked the girl who sat beside Hannah. “Stowe got to write sentimental stuff that made people cry. Why couldn’t Douglass go full pathos?”

Victoria absolutely loved it when her students asked each other the questions that mattered. “Good question, Nina. Why does Douglass hold back?”

One of her black students, Izzy, a few rows back, joined the discussion. “Because Douglass was also trying to be an activist. If he went full pathos, he wouldn’t be taken seriously. He had to be careful if he wanted to convince white Northerners to care about what wasn’t in their own backyard.”

Victoria could have cried after hearing Izzy’s eloquence. “She’s right. Douglass, who presumed that his father was his master, had to sneak to another plantation to see his own mother. He witnessed cruel beatings, experienced conditions of squalor, and saw how Christianity was perverted to justify slavery. He had to mind his rhetorical p’s and q’s before bringing this information to white Northerners.”

As Victoria spoke, students took notes. She paused to allow them time before adding, “But let’s not discount Stowe’s writing because she’s a white woman. She had the same audience, didn’t she? Her novel pulled at the heartstrings of white women of the North. This is a demographic who was buying and reading more novels, much to the chagrin of their counterparts. Sentimentality was an incredibly powerful rhetorical device. Which portions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin reached out to her target audience?”