Frederick Douglass was born black to a black mother and a white father, neither of which he was very close with. His mother, Harriet Bailey, worked for a man named Mr. Stewart. The only times Douglass saw his mother were a couple times during the night when she would walk 12 miles from the plantation she worked on to his home. Douglass never knew his father, but there were rumors that he was a slave master. Douglass spent the majority of his childhood as a slave, surrounded by the harsh treatment of his fellow slaves and poor conditions on the farms. In the first four chapters, Douglass has a relaxed and reserved tone. He does not show his anger in his writing in order to convince the audience that the events he describes really did happen. For example, on pages 13 and 14, Douglass writes about the cruel shooting of Demby by Mr. Gore. While writing about the incident, he remained calm and did …show more content…
He was treated much better by the Aulds, and was even taught the A, B, C 's and how to spell small words by Mrs. Auld, until she was told by her husband that it was unlawful. Douglass really started becoming educated while he was working in Baltimore. He met with young boys in the streets who he "converted into teachers" (Douglass, 23). These boys taught Douglass what they knew in exchange for bread. In these chapters, Douglass repeatedly showed that the main reason for slavery was ignorance. Once he became more and more educated, he realized that the whites convince African Americans from their earliest ages that they are not real human beings in order to keep them under their control. They are not taught basic reading and writing skills because this knowledge would make them more powerful. With knowledge, they could question why they are under the control of whites, and how they could possibly escape their