Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass
by Frederick Douglass (excerpt)
I was quite a child, but I well remember it.
I never shall forget it whilst I remember any thing.
It was the first of a long series of such outrages, of which I was doomed to be a witness and a participant.
It struck me with awful force. It was the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery, through which I was about to pass. It was a most terrible spectacle.
I wish I could commit to paper the feelings with which I beheld it.
Which rhetorical device does the author use in this sentence to make the reader feel the horror and violence the slaves were subjected to?
It was the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery, through which I was about to pass.
simile
personification
metaphor
paradox