There is no doubting the fact that slavery has been and always will be a controversial issue. What makes it even more complicated is the conflicting accounts of the slaves’ experiences. The Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass and Beloved both use a unique storytelling device – constructing a present from the unspeakable stories of the past. They take the psychic scars of slavery, scars that cover an entire nation, and shrink them down to a very personal level. However, their individual accounts of slavery are quite different. One major difference is how each defines the relationship between a slave mother and her child. Frederick Douglass writes of be