Frederick Douglass and his life

Narrative of the Life of an American Slave: The Use of Animal Metaphors, Images, And Comparisons by Its Author

Today, we live in a world where we usually encounter animals as pets or as cellophane wrapped packages in the meat department -- seldom as beasts of burden or creatures that we make an economic profit from, unless we are farmers. But in the 19th century of the rural agrarian South, animals were necessary to the livelihood of plantation owners, making work less onerous and providing a potential for profit in trade. Alas, the human personages of slaves provided similar respite from physical labor and similar sources of profits.

This is why, over the course of Narrative of the Life of an American Slave, the author, the once-enslaved Frederick Douglass, frequently makes use of animal images to describe his plight and to make analogies between his own existence and the existence of an animal. This would not be, initially a surprise to his contemporary readership. As a slave in the American South, Douglass was frequently forced to work amongst animals as well as function like one, so animals were a ready source of metaphor.

Douglass makes it clear how he was often asked to function as a beast of burden in his own labors, and punished like a beast by being whipped. He wrote in an era where animals were not accorded even minimal rights. Today, animal rights are a frequent source and subject of public debate, but in Douglass' era, because of the human possession of a soul, in contrast to animals, the idea of animals and humans being close in origin was less comfortable. Rather, what was of debate was if Douglass' own race was fully human or closer to the non-human 'lower' rungs of the animal kingdom, as they were frequently treated.

Thus, Douglass uses animal metaphors to glean support for his cause from a potentially sympathetic Northern readership and audience, from a religious perspective. He has a soul, unlike an animal, yet he was treated like one. He uses examples of his being treated like an animal, and bought and sold like a beast, to show that even under the 'best' forms of human enslavement, in other words, even when slaves have kind masters, they are treated as subhuman actors in the universe. "Added to the cruel lashing a to which these slaves were subjected," on one farm, "they [the slaves] were kept nearly half-starved. They seldom knew what it was to eat a full meal. I have seen Mary [a fellow slave] contending with the pigs for the offal thrown into the street. So much was Mary kicked and cut to pieces, that she was oftener called pecked than by her name." (1897, Chapter IV) Mary, out of slavery and the ill treatment is reduced to the status of a beast, although she is made, like all humans, in God's image, many of Douglass' abolitionists and Northern Christian readers would marvel, with horror.

What makes a human being human, Douglass stresses, is his or her desire for freedom, freedom to exercise his or her will. Fighting with animals for food is spiritually as well as physically degrading. Yet even when Douglass is the slave of a good white woman who treats him well physically by satisfying his bodily appetite for food and he is "better off in the regard" that he always has bread with him, unlike "many of the poor white children in the neighborhood," he does not regard himself as a happy child and envies the free white boys. In fact, "I used to bestow upon the hungry littler urchins," this bread of slavery, for the poor white boys, "in return, would give me that more valuable bread of knowledge."(1898, Chapter IIV)

Beasts can eat, but only human beings can think and learn. After Douglass gains literary knowledge, "I envied by fellow-slaves for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. (1899, Chapter IIV)

But slaves true higher nature that they possess as human beings are broken like horses are broken, and reduced to such an animal-like status, while cruel overseers gain reputations for breaking slaves like horse breakers gain reputations for their prowess over animal charges. But while the former is necessary, the latter is barbaric, and born of human laziness. "Mr. Covey was a poor man, a farm-renter...Mr. Covey had acquired a very high reputation for breaking young slaves, and this reputation was of immense value to him. It enabled him to get his farm tilled with much less expense to himself." (1906) Covey is subhuman in his cunning to the point where he reduces himself to animal metaphors; "such was his cunning, that we used to call him, amongst ourselves 'the snake,' (19060