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   maldoror Student
   College - Senior

   Some of his childhood experiences included:

   1. Being separated from his mother.  He has vague memories of her visiting him, but when he hears news of her death, he states that "he greeted it as if hearing news of the death of a stranger."

   2. He first witnesses the violence of slavery when he witnesses his Aunt Hester being savagely beaten by Mr. Plummer.  Hester had been visiting another slave, and Plummer was sexually jealous of her being with another man.

   3. Douglass remembers the songs of the slaves.  He insists that they always filled him with sadness, and that the ignorant masters thought that since the slaves were singing, they were happy.  This is not the case.

   4. Douglass remembers another slave being shot in cold blood.  The overseer commands the slave to come to him, and when the slave does not come to him on the count of three, the overseer (Mr. Gore) shoots the man dead.

   5. When Douglass is sent to stay with the Aulds, Sophia is at first kind to him.  She starts to teach him how to read.  Mr. Auld puts a stop to the lessons.  This is when Douglass realizes the importance of being able to read and decides to do so at all costs.  Mrs. Auld becomes twisted and hateful; she was initially a kind Christian woman.  Douglass uses her as an example of how slavery corrupts the slave owners as well.

   6. The eNotes page on this book is very helpful; a fellow student from Africa who has had trouble adjusting to the English language found them to be very helpful in his understanding of the book when I was tutuoring him.

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   Posted by maldoror on Friday May 8, 2009 at 5:09 PM