Life of a Beast

            Throughout the first half of the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass enlightens readers to how slaves were seen as property rather than human beings, just as basic domesticated animals were also seen as property and not animals. Both slaves and animals were worked hard day and night, with no regard to how tired they would get. They were both fed by the all-powerful hand that was their masters’. Slaves were constantly being whipped, just as a lion, or beast would be tamed at a circus, however slaves would receive much harsher whippings. The idea of human rights back then was nearly non-existent. After reading this first half of the narrative, I have come to a conclusion that the life of a slave and the life an animal or better termed beast, is roughly one in the same.

            When one thinks of a beast, the first descriptions that come to mind are brute, extremely hard working, and simple-minded. When I think of a beast, I think of a giant wild boar in the forest. Wild boars used to be frequently hunted back in the day, and are still hunted to this day. This isn’t exactly a perfect parallel, but Douglass educated readers in his narrative of how it was literally socially acceptable in some areas to kill a slave, just as one would kill an animal. As a young child, Douglass bore witness to multiple murders of fellow slaves, saying “that killing a slave, or any colored person, in Talbot county, Maryland, is not treated as a crime, either by the courts or the community” (26). It was literally okay to kill a human being without having to worry about any repercussions. It seems that many people back then, mainly white people, had no remorse for the treatment of the basic value of human life, just as they would have no remorse for the treatment of a life of a pig or cow that was about to get slaughtered.

            Speaking of the life of pigs, Frederick Douglass gives a strong allusion to the feeding of the slave children and to that of pigs. The children at his slave estate were fed a boiled, coarse corn meal that was better known as “MUSH”. “It was put into a large wooden tray or trough, and set upon the ground. The children were then called, like so many pigs, and like many pigs they would come and devour the mush; some with oyster-shells, others with pieces of shingle, some with naked hands, and none with spoons. He that ate fastest got most; he that was strongest secured the best place; and few left the trough satisfied” (28). It’s almost like survival of the fittest and these young ones were learning early. The simile with the pigs was a perfect image for me to try imagining how these kids basically lived like animals. They were given virtually no clothes and barely ate enough to survive. Essentially the life of a slave was survival of the fittest, just as a beast naturally partakes in the survival of the fittest in the wild.

            The idea of survival of the fittest was never more so felt then when Frederick Douglass had to return to his old master’s estate to be valued and allocated to the recipients of his old master’s will. “We were all ranked together at the valuation…There were horses and men, cattle and women, pigs and children, all holding the same rank in the scale of being” (40). This is Douglass explicitly admitting that the value of an enslaved human is no greater than that of a domesticated animal. The fitter the being, in his case man or beast, in the eyes of the slave owners would be sent to a better master, whereas the ones that didn’t make the cut were not very fortunate in their newly found home. Thus, the life of the slave is no different to that of the life of an animal, or in other words, beast.