From Thoughts and Sentiments, which words best describe Cugoano's attitude toward slavery in this excerpt?

From Thoughts and Sentiments, which words best describe Cugoano's attitude toward slavery in this excerpt?

• A. angry and disgusted
• B. calm and understanding
• C. sad and defeated
• D. passive and detached

Answer: (A)

The main concept here is tone—the speaker’s emotional stance toward slavery. In Ottobah Cugoano’s Thoughts and Sentiments, the rhetoric is driven by moral outrage and a visceral reaction against cruelty. The passage presents slavery as a monstrous injustice and a brutal violation of humanity, and Cugoano’s language communicates anger at the system and disgust at the suffering it produces. This emotional force is meant to provoke readers to reject slavery and advocate for abolition, not to sympathize with or calmly understand the practice. That’s why the option describing anger and disgust fits best. It captures the urgent, condemnatory mood he adopts. The other descriptions—calm and understanding, sad and defeated, or passive and detached—don’t align with his impassioned, call-to-action voice, which seeks to mobilize moral outrage against the slave trade.

The main concept here is tone—the speaker’s emotional stance toward slavery. In Ottobah Cugoano’s Thoughts and Sentiments, the rhetoric is driven by moral outrage and a visceral reaction against cruelty. The passage presents slavery as a monstrous injustice and a brutal violation of humanity, and Cugoano’s language communicates anger at the system and disgust at the suffering it produces. This emotional force is meant to provoke readers to reject slavery and advocate for abolition, not to sympathize with or calmly understand the practice.

That’s why the option describing anger and disgust fits best. It captures the urgent, condemnatory mood he adopts. The other descriptions—calm and understanding, sad and defeated, or passive and detached—don’t align with his impassioned, call-to-action voice, which seeks to mobilize moral outrage against the slave trade.