Question

close read: analyze craft and structure
identify the choice that best answers the question.
in which of the following quotations from douglasss fourth of july speech does douglass offer evidence to support his claim that enslaved persons are human beings, not brutes?
a. to drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony.
b. is it not astonishing that, while we are ploughing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges... and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men!
c. what am i to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters?
d. to the slave, your celebration of the fourth of july is a sham, your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless... your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery...

Explanation:

• Option B shows enslaved people engaging in human - like activities (ploughing, planting, reaping, using tools, building, having hopes for life and immortality), which directly supports the claim that they are human beings.
• Option A focuses on the inhumanity of a certain action towards an enslaved person but doesn't directly show their humanity through their own actions.
• Option C is more about arguing against the wrongness of making men brutes rather than providing evidence of their humanity.
• Option D is about criticizing the celebration from the enslaved person's perspective but not about proving their humanity.

Answer:

B. Is it not astonishing that, while we are ploughing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges... and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men!