Olaudah Equiano is describing the brutal treatment of slaves being transported overseas. In the beginning of the passage he describes his fear of being killed or eaten by the European men. After he was brought onto the ship he describes what he sees and states “there was a multitude of black people of every description chained together, every one of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow.”(73) The slaves are kept in the cargo hold of the ship chained to the ground. There were guards watching them to make sure they didn’t try and jump over board. Equiano recounts the state of the area the slaves were kept in he states “the air soon became unfit for respiration, from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the…
Why do scholars today doubt parts of Olaudah Equiano's autobiography of his years as a slave?…
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.…
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.…
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, establishes a profound tone within the text, writing of truth and an unexaggerated account of Equiano’s life journey. Equiano’s tone of writing is humble. The purpose of the book is not for his own vanity or pride but to capture the power his faith which guided him through slavery until the point of his freedom. As the chapters unfold, Equiano establishes an authentic account of his plan to abolish the horrors of slavery by creating physical written text to illustrate the magnitude of the abuse and suffering slaves endured. The book maintains his reports of impassioned and emotionally centred rants against the slave trade industry. Along with many strong stances in regards to the so…
During the time of the Middle Passage, the people on the various slave ships suffered constantly because of sickness, cruelty to the Africans, and lack of food and water. I didn’t matter what race they were because they were all stuck on the same boat, with the same diseases going around. The conditions of the boat they were staying on were unacceptable. There was blood and mucus all over the floor boards from the disease called the flux, which caused a lot of slaves to catch the flux as well and die off (Document C). A slave Ship Doctor named Alexander Falconbridge said that the place where the slaves stayed “resembled a slaughter house” and coming from a white doctor, this means a lot because he was sticking up fro the slaves (Document C).…
The impressions of the people they met were different. Equiano had a horrible encounter with the slave traders on the ship he was on. He mentioned, “Every circumstance I met with, served only to render my state more painful, and heightened my apprehensions,…
“The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano”, by Olaudah Equiano, is a narrative about a slave going to the new world. Olaudah Equiano was kidnapped by slave traders to be sent to the New World to be sold to other slave owners. This slave trade between Africa and North America was from 1619-1807 and carried hundreds of African men, women, and children in one tightly packed ship. In “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano”, Equiano describes the horrible conditions slaves were forced to endure on the voyage to the new world. Equiano wrote this slave narrative, a literary work that exposes the horrors of slavery through the first hand experience of the writer, to help abolish slavery. To assist in persuading the…
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,…
Olaudah Equiano was born in the year 1745 in an area called 'Eboe' in Guinea. Almost everything we know about Equiano's life we find from Equiano's own account in The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, published in 1789. At the age of eleven he and his sister were kidnapped while out playing, and were carried through the night to a cabin and then put on board a slave ship. It sounds like Olaudah is writing in the document. The document is in first person, Olaudah is talking about his experience on the middle passage. Equiano tells us that “When I looked around the ship too, and saw a large furnace of copper boiling, and a multitude of black people of every description chained together, every…
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.…
In The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, the author Equiano recollects on his abduction, the Middle Passage, his years as a slave and later his freedom. He recalls being ripped from his home, an African Ibo village and sold into slavery. The most horrifying details of his story were during the Middle Passage, where Europeans were uncivilized, peaceful and moral to any of the slaves on the ships. Equiano’s experiences gave him knowledge of how Europeans truly are, the real version. As a result, he writes about many of his experiences using pathos as a tool to generate emotion in his readers. Moreover, he uses pathos to challenge the tenants of imperialism articulated by a scholar, James Tully, that Europeans believe that…
At a young age most parents teach their children simple abilities such as playing sports but that was not the case for Aminata, at the age of seven rains Aminata’s mother “taught [her] how to reach inside a woman…. Mama said it was good to have [her] along because [her] hands were so small” (Hill, 15) this skill was referred to as baby catching which proved to be a key part in her survival. Her skill first saved her life when she arrived on the toubab men’s ship when the medicine man saw her as a useful slave because she could deliver babies of the slaves, because of this the medicine man took Aminata under his wing and taught her how to take care of the slaves and this helped her survive the ship because if the men didn’t see a need for her…
The journey to America could take up to eight weeks. In "The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano," Equiano says "the closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us. This produced copious perspirations, so that the air soon became unfit for respiration" (page 45). The ships used to transport slaves were over packed and did not have proper ventilation. The slaves were treated as if they were livestock or cargo instead of actual human beings. The documentary "The Middle Passage" stated that slave ships "resembled a slaughter house". Many ships began to follow slave ships because of the amount of dead bodies that were constantly being thrown overboard. There were plenty of times when slaves would willingly jump overboard because they preferred death over slavery. The psychological impact was the biggest challenge slaves faced, "these people were scared to death and stripped of their dignity", "The middle passage." Slaves were chained up and thrown in the cargo area of a ship, they were not given proper nutrition and the air was filled with disease. The treatment slaves received on ships was barbaric and…
One thing I found particularly fascinating was Equiano’s account of the destructiveness of the slave trade. People are kidnapped from their homes, families are broken up, and people are taken from not just their physical homes, but their history and culture. What I found particularly interesting was Equiano’s renaming, and how it erased his old identity. I found that interesting because while students often think of the obvious effects of the slave trade, the effect of being renaming and how it shapes your identity as a person is not often brought up. Another thing I found interesting was the effect of the slave trade on the owners. Equiano is shown different degrees of kindness and it is suggested that the cruel masters were possibly corrupted…