I would like to talk about the beginning of “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. I feel that the start of this story perfectly lays out the rest of this novel. The main concepts laid out in the first couple of chapters include: Family corruption, women, and poverty.

Douglass first shares with us that the children don’t even know their own ages, or even there own parents. The slave families are torn apart before the child even knows his own mother or father. Just thinking of not knowing my own age or real parents would be very scary. I feel like I wouldn’t be true to myself nor would I be myself. Douglass started the novel this way in order to show you the corrupt life of a slave. And how the slaves’ life isn’t really their life at all it is their owners. This simple example shows the corruption of slavery, slave-owners, and the way slavery was kept in tact. Slave-owners would even rape the women slave in order to produce new slaves for them. It is a disgusting and brutal circle of events that the slaves go through nearly everyday of their never-ending life.

Women do have an important but small role in the first section of Douglass’s life. Most almost all slaves do not know their mother, but in Douglass’s case it is a little different. Although they were split at birth Douglass and his mother are able to meet. On certain nights Douglass’s mother walks 10 miles in the middle of the night in order to hold her son in her arms while he sleeps. She then wakes up early in order to walk home. It is a sad a devastating story and nothing close to a real family bond. This is why when Douglass hears about his mother’s death it does not severely affect him. Yes, he is saddened for a minute but not for more than a minute.

Douglass’s life starts out with his identity and family being torn apart from him. But throughout the novel he gains back both of these things in order to live a healthy life.