Content warning: This section of the guide discusses racism and enslavement.

One of Douglass’s preeminent themes in his second memoir is enslavement’s dehumanization of both the enslaved and the enslaver. Having acquired more education, independence, and eloquence since the publication of the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass a decade earlier, Douglass identifies his tormenters, whereas he had previously withheld their names, and engages in penetrating psychological analyses. By doing the latter, he is careful not to deny his past tormenters their humanity despite their own abdication of it.

Douglass first details how enslavement transformed him from a carefree child (he was not aware of his condition for his first eight years) into a brute, due to witnessing violence against fellow enslaved people; his mistreatment at the hands of his supposed guardian, Aunt Katy; not being allowed the right to read; and enduring Edward Covey’s relentless cruelty. Douglass frequently uses the noun “brute” throughout the memoir. It identifies what he felt he had become due to ill-treatment at the hands of enslavers, overseers, people who broke the will of enslaved people, and anyone else committed to enslavement or trapped within it.