Chapter 1

Answers to Reading Questions:
1. There are two clues in the context that answer this question:

a. When Douglass says "slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs" he is comparing slaves to horses. This is how slavemasters wanted the slaves to feel - like animals, like property - not like individuals. The sense of individuality is empowering.
b. When Douglass says "The white children could tell their ages... why I ought to be deprived of the same privilege." Knowledge, even knowledge as simple as knowing your age, was a privilege. Remember, knowledge is power.

2. A mulatto is a person who is half black and half white. Captain Anthony, his first slave master, is suspected of being his father.

3. Slave children were separated from their mothers as infants "to blunt and destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child." Familial relationships would strengthen the will of the slaves and may incite aggression from a slave being moved to defend or protect a family member. Also, this furthers the idea that slaves were property, not people.

4. Ned Roberts is Colonel Llyod's slave.

5. This has to do with identifying the author's TONE. Here are two examples:
"gory victim" - Douglass feels like slave masters are bloodthirsty predators, criminals
"infernal purpose" - Douglass is comparing the goal of the slave master to something experienced in hell; extremely evil.

6. The quote is a hyperbole that suggests that if slave masters continued raping and impregnating their slaves, at some point the slaves would be closer descendants of whites than Africans.

7. Slaveholders used the Bible as evidence of their superiority to African Americans and thus has a scriptural defense for enslaving them. The other example is "Manifest Destiny."

8. This is a metaphor and it is in reference to the first time Douglass saw a person being whipped and foreshadows the infernal nature of what he will experience as a slave.