Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Chapter 9 Summary

Summary

Frederick Douglass arrives in St. Michael’s in March 1832 to live with Master Thomas Auld, whom he has not seen since living on Colonel Lloyd’s plantation. Both master and slave are essentially strangers, and Douglass soon meets Thomas’s wife; he finds them "equally mean and cruel." For the first time in many years Douglass experiences keen hunger: his new household gives him and three other kitchen slaves far less food than they need, forcing them to beg or steal from neighbors while food rots in the household stores. Douglass observes Thomas Auld’s prevailing characteristic as meanness and contrasts his new master’s stinginess with the relative plenty he remembers from Master Hugh’s household.

Douglass describes Captain Auld (Thomas Auld) as an adopted slaveholder—awkward, inconsistent, and wanting authority he cannot sustain. Auld’s conversion at a Methodist camp-meeting paradoxically increases his cruelty, since he now claims religious sanction for harsh treatment. Preachers frequently lodge at Auld’s home and are fed while the slaves go hungry; among the visiting clergy Douglass singles out Mr. George Cookman as sympathetic to slaves. Douglass recounts being driven from a small Sabbath school by hostile town class-leaders and describes a brutal episode in which Auld repeatedly ties and whips a badly burned, nearly helpless young woman called Henny, justifying it with scripture. After months of whippings and charges that Douglass’s city habits make him unsuitable, Thomas Auld decides to "break" Douglass and hires him out for a year to Edward Covey, a farmer with a reputation as a skilled breaker of young slaves. Douglass accepts the move gladly for the certainty of food, despite knowing Covey’s harsh methods and religious standing in the community.

Key events

1. Douglass moves to Master Thomas Auld in St. Michael’s (March 1832).
2. He and three kitchen slaves receive insufficient rations and face hunger.
3. Douglass diagnoses Thomas Auld’s dominant trait as meanness and weakness.
4. Auld’s conversion to Methodism makes him more cruel; preachers stay at his house.
5. A small Sabbath school for slaves is broken up by local class-leaders.
6. Auld violently punishes Henny and justifies it with scripture.
7. Douglass is hired out for a year to Edward Covey, a known "nigger-breaker."

Analysis

This chapter deepens Douglass’s social and moral critique by juxtaposing religion and cruelty, hunger and hypocrisy. Structurally, it shifts setting from Baltimore back to St. Michael’s and provides a concentrated character study of Thomas Auld: mean, insecure, and dangerously inconsistent. Douglass uses close, concrete incidents—the starving kitchen, rotting food in the smoke-house, the prolonged whipping of Henny—to dramatize how economic stinginess and religious language combine to normalize brutality. The repeated emphasis on hunger functions as both literal suffering and a metaphor for spiritual and moral deprivation among slaveholders who profess piety while committing violence.

Narratively, Douglass balances reportage and moral commentary: he names specific preachers and town actors to show how community institutions (church, leadership) reinforce slavery rather than challenge it. The decision to place Douglass with Edward Covey introduces a new threatening figure and foreshadows an intensified period of testing. Language choices—sharp epithets like "mean" and phrases showing hypocrisy—undercut any sentimental view of Christian conversion among slaveholders. The chapter thereby advances themes of hypocrisy, institutional complicity, and the bodily and psychological costs of slavery while setting up the next phase of Douglass’s ordeal under Covey.

Important quotes

“I was now, for the first time during a space of more than seven years, made to feel the painful gnawings of hunger—”

NarratorDouglass emphasizes the new and acute experience of hunger after moving to Thomas Auld, highlighting material deprivation.

“He was mean; and, like most other mean men, he lacked the ability to conceal his meanness.”

NarratorA sharp character judgment that summarizes Thomas Auld’s dominant trait and explains his visible, unmasked cruelty.

“He resolved to put me out, as he said, to be broken; and, for this purpose, he let me for one year to a man named Edward Covey.”

NarratorThis sentence marks the transition to Douglass’s being hired out to Covey, introducing the next phase of his trials.

Characters in Chapter 9

• Frederick Douglass
• Thomas Auld
• Hugh Auld
• Colonel Lloyd
• Henny
• Eliza
• Priscilla
• Edward Covey
• Mr. Storks
• Mr. Ewery
• Mr. Humphry
• Mr. Hickey
• Mr. George Cookman
• Mr. Samuel Harrison
• Mr. Wilson
• Mr. West
• Mr. Fairbanks
• William Hamilton