Olaudah Equiano and Frederick Douglass: The Similarities of Slave Life
...ay of knowing whether they were off on some distant plantation or dead. The loss of one’s family is a traumatic experience, but for slaves, it continued to get worse. From slave ships to plantation quarters for slaves, there was no such thing as comfortable living. Equiano first experienced the discomfort when he was being transported from his native country. “I was soon put down under the decks, and there I received such a salutation in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life: so that, with the loathsomeness of the stench, and with my crying together, I became so sick and low that I was not able to eat.” Equiano’s trip across the ocean from his native country was a voyage filled with violence, sickness, and cruelty. However, these were the common circumstances for transporting slaves from their country to the slave markets. Douglass’s experiences were all too similar while he was living under the harsh conditions of slave housing on plantations. “I was kept almost naked- no shoes, no stockings, no jacket, no trousers, nothing on but a coarse tow linen shirt, reaching only to my knees. I had no bed. I must have perished in the cold, but that, the coldest nights, I used to steal a bag…I would crawl into this bag, and there sleep on the cold, damp, clay floor with my head in and feet out.” Douglass continued to explain that because of the early frosts and freezing temperatures that his feet, without any protection from the cold, grew such large cracks that “the pen with which I am writing might be laid in the gashes.” Both men, at one time or another, had to contend with disgusting, inhumane living conditions provided for them by their master and or transporter. In addition to the terrible living conditions masters and captains provided was the sadistic violence they inflicted on their slaves on a daily basis. Equiano recalled, “And yet in Montserrat I have seen a negro-man staked to the ground and cut most shockingly, and then his ears cut off, bit by bit, because he had been connected with a white woman, who was a common prostitute!” Imagine watching a man, of a different skin tone, being staked to the ground and having pieces of his ears cut off for sleeping with a prostitute. Brutal acts, like the one witnessed by Equiano, were also common to Douglass. The first violence Douglass recalled witnessing in his narrative hit much closer to home since the slave being brutalized was his Aunt Hester. “…He took her into the kitchen, and striped her from neck to waist, leaving her neck, shoulders, and back entirely naked…After crossing her hands, he tied them with a strong rope…He made her get upon the stool, and tied her hands to the hook…He commenced to lay on the heavy cowskin, and soon the warm, red blood came dripping to the floor.” These violent actions were used as a method of controlling slaves. If a slave feared for his or her life at every given moment, he or she would be more likely to follow the commands of the master and not cause any bit of chaos. The final similarity between Douglass and Equiano is the grueling workload each man was expected to pull at the drop their master’s hat. Many slaves were forced to tackle tasks even if they had no idea how to accomplish it. Douglass recalls, “I had never driven oxen before, and of course I was very awkward…the ...