Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass – Wannie Olazabal

In Chapter I on page 236, a quote that caught my attention the most was “A want of information concerning my own was a source of unhappiness to me even during childhood. The white children could tell their ages. I could not tell why I ought to be deprived of the same privilege” (page 236). Though this was in the very beginning of the passage, I have thought about it sometimes as I continued reading the rest of it. It’s well known that the United States’ history with slavery was horrible to say the least, from working ridiculously long hours to receiving whippings for even the slightest dissatisfaction towards a slave’s master and even murder. Alongside this, slaves were also withheld any sort of knowledge, even information about themselves. There’s another quote discussing how this may be due to the fact that people would rather have their slaves be deprived of such information (page 236), possibly to avoid future conflict. When thinking about it, with some exceptions, most of the times things like age is something insignificant and just gives someone an idea how old somebody is. Basically, a number. Despite that, it would still be nice to know how old you are, it’s just a little something. A young Douglass feeling sadness for being deprived of this information is understandable, because why would you not be given an answer for such a simple question? He’s also makes a good point towards the end of the first quote, there’s no legitimate reason as to why he couldn’t share his age like white children do, it’s simply a number. Douglass’ writing style seems to get straight to the point and in detail to the best of his knowledge, and it’s what I enjoyed about when reading this autobiography.