1) I believe that it sets the tone for his account, describes his attitude toward the book and gives an overall impression of Equiano himself. It shows his work is not meant merely for entertainment but for the purpose of promoting the inhumanity and torments of slavery.…
When Equiano’s autobiographical text was first published in England, 1789, it was a big hit, as I would say. It was mostly considered as “to end the slave trade and played a crucial role in the nationwide abolitionist movement of the late eighteenth-century England” (Ito 83). For me it was not a surprise that England would have been onboard with the whole aspect of abolishing slavery because throughout Equiano’s autobiography I could notice how well he was being treated. For example, Equiano as a boy was taken to Guernsey and he said, “This woman behaved…
The first selection is a document that shows the laws of slavery from 1660 to 1705 in Virginia. The document shows what rules the slave owners must follow and what punishment African slaves received if rules were not followed compared to the English laborers who rules were less harsh. Finally the second selection is a passage from Olaudah Equiano's autobiography written in 1789. Olauden describes his slave experience at a slave auction in the Caribbean. Olauden believes that the white men should live up to their belief of liberty to any man no matter of color. These selection shows how valuable African slaves were to colony America.…
4. Equiano was familiar with the entire system of slavery from Africa to the Middle Passage to plantation life in the West Indies and United States. How do his experiences of African slavery and New-World slavery compare? What is his view of slavery? Is it so simple as a one-sided condemnation, or is it more complicated? Does Equiano accept slavery under any circumstances? Are their ways in which it is legitimized?…
Equiano experienced life as a slave on several continents. He endured the torment of the Middle Passage and the various physical and emotional insults and tortures, which came as a result of bondage to another individual. These descriptions are important in establishing the primary players in the slave game. The first is the African player and the other is the White player represented by both Europeans and Americans.…
Most importantly, Equiano learns of religion in greater detail from a captain’s clerk that he saw as a father figure. Equiano’s exposure to these subjects further fuels his desire to achieve freedom with boundless confidence. Now armed with the virtue of an education in scholarly, religious, financial, and societal manners, Equiano’s freedom from slavery is attainable and an inevitable…
Equiano’s document tell us many things, including how the people viewed the society and the morality of the public at that time. This document also show us how far we have come, as a society, as the whole world, from the time of brutality, time of savage, to the time of peace, and sociality. This document still has effect on our society even to this day, because even to this day, the discrimination against a group of people because of their race, religions, or nationality still exist. This document reveal how the slaves were treated, how slaves were nothing but a property, and how the Africans view the european.…
The passage from The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself is structured to humanize the African population being brought to the America’s. By positively depicting the image of black men and at the same time using negative diction to portray the image of white men, Equiano is able to challenge the ideals that black people are savages and instead questions who the real bad ones are. Equiano structures his passage by first introducing black people as helpless when he states, “poor chained men”. This is intentional because it instantly infers that the black people in the text are the victims. Equiano further uplifts the image of black people when he states, “ I found some of my nation,…
The autobiography ‘Kidnapped’, by Equiano is his point of view on the journey on slave ships to America. The story shows first hand the conditions on the ship and the treatment he received by the white slave owners. One time that shows just how cruel the owners were, they went fishing, ate the fish that were caught, and then threw the leftovers back into the ocean therefore wasting them.…
Slaves, in general, endured unthinkable things while, on the Middle Passage Ship to the Americas as well as their duration in slavery, Olaudah Equiano was no different. After reading Olaudah Equiano’s, article “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African”. Slavery affected many lives. Most importantly, as any slave it was additionally agonizing to live in that period. Through Equiano’s eleven-year-old eyes, his voyage was extremely devastating.…
Many years later Equiano wrote a biography about the treatment of slaves in Virginia. His descriptions of the punishments and humiliations that slaves had to endure were the first published account of an autobiography of an African slave. Equiano’s writings on slavery and its suffering were a factor in the enactment of the Slave Trade Act of 1807. I feel that Equiano was an extraordinary individual who patiently bought his own freedom and became an effective advocate for abolition.…
audience’s outlook on slavery. In addition, the passage on page 380 also shows how Auld’s…
This summary covers only an excerpt of “Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave” which contains only three chapters—six, seven, and eight—yet these chapters are still enough to capture of the impactful narrative of Frederick Douglass’ life.…
If it wasn’t for the final parliamentary reform, campaigns and religious groups getting together to abolish slavery our ancestor would be still in slavery in the world would not have been a better place. Many people were very prejudiced in their beliefs. Slavery’s primary victims, mostly knowing nothing of the Declaration itself, would corroborate its truth by their various acts of resistance, displaying their natural love of liberty and their moral humanity as rights possessors. These displays of humanity would naturally arouse the sympathy of non-slaveholders, a few of whom at first, and more with the passage of time, would take up the cause of abolition. Frederick Douglas as a free man reflective of racial prejudice that it was wrong how slaves had been mistreated. Why was it important for them to have liberty and be…
This narrative begins with the childhood of Frederick Douglass and ends with his adventures as an abolitionist. He gives insight into his personal recollections of his first awareness of what it meant to be a slave, from his own experiences and his experience as a witness to the brutality of one human being upon another human being. He allows readers through his words to have a front row seat to the world of slavery and the main objective of slavery supporters to dehumanize and oppress another race and culture. The goal of his prose is to raise awareness of the cruelty of man upon the backs of blacks, which subsequently he hoped would end…
