Olaudah Equiano Rhetorical Analysis Essay

In Olaudah Equiano’s narrative, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, the reader is illustrated a slaves life during a six to seven month journey, proving the point that slavery is a horrific experience and a bad impact on how society is viewed. The diction Equiano uses specifies the pain that the slaves endured. Equiano also used sensory details to relate to the smells on the ship or relating to the feelings of the chains used on him, the heat of the climate and how crowded the ship was. All of these create visual senses fall under the imagery literary device. Equiano develops a scene where he blames incidental acts on the improvident avarice. “The air soon became unfit for respiration, from a variety of loathsome smells,
Edwards uses periodic sentences. These sentences build and build to get to the main point at the end of the sentence. This allowed Edwards to add detail to intimidate people with each phrase or clause. Edwards’ purposely uses language to illustrate the relationship between God and man. The words Edwards uses demonstrates the connection between God and man include a spider’s web, and a hanging thread; both can be broken easily. His continuous language puts God in a powerful position and man in a powerless position. Edwards’s uses imagery of flames and fire and the thought of a bottomless pit, and the metaphors of God’s wrath “is like great waters that are dammed for the present,” (Edwards). All of the negative connotations connected to the relationship between God and man delivers a guilty feeling for his audience. By the end of Edwards’s sermon, he offers the sinners and atheist the hope of God’s salvation which only comes through the belief in