It was during that time that Fredrick didn't even know his own age. As mentioned in Fredrick Douglass's memoir, Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, Douglass states that "it is the desire of most masters of my acquaintance to keep their slave thus ignorant" (Douglass, 15). This is the first scenario where we have noticed the dehumanizing practices of slavery occurring. During Fredrick's childhood, he noticed that white children could tell their age, and he himself was unable to do so. He could not ask his master for anything because slaves were not granted this right. A slave owner's act of keeping his slave in ignorance shows an example of how slaves were dehumanized. They have been deprived of awareness of themselves as people because they were designed to be the property of their owners. Not being able to have information and knowledge of simple things made him unhappy and led him to believe that the process of dehumanization occurs when the slave owner tries to keep the slave ignorant. It was something shocking for Fredrick to hear about the nature of slavery, but hearing it helped him establish a stronger mindset towards slavery.