Equal Rights for Equal Labor
The most intense imagery in the speech occurs early on as supporting evidence for Sojourner Truth’s metaphorical contention that she "is" woman’s rights. This evidence is provided in the powerful form of a series of words that convey the labor she has endured and survived doing just as well as any man: “I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed.”
Intellectual Capacity
Another memorable image is the way Truth confronts the delicate issue of the conventional wisdom that men are more intelligent than women. Willing to give ground on the intellectual superiority issue for the moment, she uses the metaphor of the difference between a pint container and a quarter container filled to the brim to question why men would be so afraid of allowing women to use the full force of their intelligence. Like a pint-sized container, she suggests, a woman’s brain cannot use more intellect than can fit, and since a pint will always be less than a quart, why not allow it to be filled to the brim?
Biblical Imagery
As a religious Christian, Truth utilizes powerful biblical imagery to make her point. She swiftly moves from the earliest book of the Old Testament to a significant event in the latter days of the Jesus as she questions man’s place in this story, suggesting her and her audience's high level of fluency in this imagery.
Birds of Prey
The speech ends with a terrifying image: men caught in a moment of indecision between facing the ravages of a hawk while alive or becoming carrion for buzzards after death. Either decision results in unpleasant and unwanted consequences.
