From the very beginning of his Narrative, Douglass shocks and horrifies his readers. Not only does he vividly detail the physical cruelties inflicted on slaves, but he also presents a frank discussion about sex between white male owners and female slaves.
Like other autobiographers of his time, Douglass chooses to begin his story by telling when and where he was born. However, this is impossible, he says, because slave owners keep slaves ignorant about their age and parentage in order to strip them of their identities. (Douglass is also implying that this ploy is also a refusal by white owners to acknowledge their carnal natures.) Slaves are thus reduced to the level of animals: "Slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs." The tone of this passage is simple and factual, presented with little emotion, yet the reader cannot help feeling outraged by it. The separation of mother and child is another way slave owners control their slaves, preventing slave children from developing familial bonds, loyalty to another slave, and a knowledge of heritage and identity.
Douglass' underlying tone is bitter, especially about his white father creating him and then abandoning him to slavery. He immediately tackles an uncomfortable topic for the readers of his and our times — the rape of black women by white men with power. According to Douglass, the children of white masters and female slaves generally receive the worst treatment of all, and the master is frequently compelled to sell his mulatto children "out of deference to the feelings of his white wife." For the wife, her husband's mulatto children are living reminders of his infidelity.
