Analysis Of Olaudah Equiano

While Equiano's narrative shows the terrible conditions that he and his fellow Africans had to endure on the ship, Columbus’s journal has a very different cover. As opposed to Equiano's picture, Columbus’s journal shows he and his crew landing on an island in the Caribbean claiming land for spain triumphantly. This obviously shows two very different objectives in the stories. Emotion can be effected with the words we use as well, in Equiano's narrative there is an

Thus, we can see how each story of the captives help reveal the different feelings one might have while being held and dehumanized like Equiano and Rowlandson were. This is important because both rowlandson and Equiano were subject to torture, humiliation, and slavery. So, how would you react if you had someone you loved being subject to all these horrible, abusive

The Slave Ship by Robert Riggs and The interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself by Olaudah Equiano has many similarities depicted within the works. Upon viewing the painting, the first item that attracted my eye was the man leaping overboard through the gap in the net around the top left of the painting (Riggs). When I saw this, I immediately thought of Equiano’s description of the three men that had jumped overboard to escape the horrors of the ship. Two of the men perished, but one man was rescued and punished by a vicious flogging for trying to escape (Equiano 698). This leads to the next similarity that these two works share.

That’s when he realized his chances of seeing his home country again were very slim. The smell under the decks were so terrible that he became so sick he was unable to eat; he wished death would relieve him. When it was time to eat and he refused, he got laid down, his feet tied and beaten badly. He found some of his countrymen and asked what was going on and they told him they are being carried to the white people’s country to work for them. The boat lacked fresh air and it was so hot and unbearable that people became sick and died.

Olaudah Equiano had not yet published his narrative when Voltaire imagined, in his novel 's Chapter 19, Candide and Cacambo meeting an articulate "negro" critic of the slave labor used on European sugar plantations. Re-read this passage in Candide: How do its insights into the realities of slavery compare and contrast with what you learn about the slave trade and slave labor from Equiano 's experiences? How do Equiano 's experiences in slavery compare and contrast with his descriptions of the slaves ' lives in his father 's household, when he was a young child? How does Equiano 's lack of critical stance against the slave holding practiced by his native Igbo culture either strengthen or undermine his argument against Europeans ' use of African

In Equiano's personal slave narrative, "The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African", Equiano flips the idea that the African people are backwards and barbaric, thus ripe for slavery, by demonstrating his personal exceptionalism through his literacy to show that it is truly the white people who are backwards and barbaric through their own hypocrisy. This reversal that Equiano demonstrates in his slave narrative shows that the savagery of African people exists as a misconception and makes the reader fully grasp the need to abolish slavery and any inequality present. On page seventy-eight, Equiano uses first person pronouns like 'I', 'my', and 'me' to separate himself from the other African people and whites around him. This separation that Equiano creates demonstrates his exceptionalism as an African slave.

Equiano was born in 1745 in Eboe, which was in Africa, and is now known as Nigeria. At the age of eleven him and his sister were kidnapped and sold to slave traders in the West Indies. Him and his sister got separated during the slave trade while trying their best not to. Equiano talks about the culture of the people in Africa. He was purchased by a Navy Lieutenant by Michael Pascal.

Coming to Europe did not only give Equiano freedom from slavery but also a Christian faith. However, his belief was not easy but just simple accepted the mercy of the almighty God, the humiliation of Lord Jesus Christ and God’s love to hear his prayer for someone who is sinful living man. First and for most, Equiano said “I began seriously to reflect on the dangers I had escaped, particularly those of my last voyage, which made a lasting impression on my mind, and, by the grace of God, proved afterwards a mercy to me; it caused me to reflect deeply on my eternal state, and to seek the Lord with full purpose of heart ere it was too late. I rejoiced greatly; and heartily thanked the Lord for directing me to London, where I was determined to work

Olaudah Equiano, and the narrative of his life that he has written is eye opening. He and his sister had their rights stripped from them, and they were separated from each other indefinitely. However, to me, it seemed more shocking to see less of the violence that I had initially thought of in relation to slavery. During the time that Olaudah spent as a slave, he was treated more as a servant. During his first servitude he turned killed a chicken, and ran away, but he was not beaten or punished.

Unimaginable crowding created lots of suffocation. Moans and groans of the dying echoed through the boat, Every African soul and body ached while white men feasted on succulent fish. At least, what seemed succulent to the slaves was normal for the whites. This may have been the toughest thing Olauduh, or anyone like him had to go through. Olaudah describes himself as God's most obedient and devoted humble servant, as the slave masters describe him as obedient and devoted to his work.

According to Wiltz, it 's a definite legendary unknown. An unknown that is, concerning a fellow of letters, one who shook up the people back in 1789. British readers were fascinated by his first-hand account of being abducted and imprisoned at age 11 and hauled from Nigeria to the New World in a horror-filled captivity vessel. Equiano 's story has long been seen as the conclusive version of the notorious “middle passage”, one of the very first captivity tales, a detailed account that gave the inexpert abolitionist crusade a ringing ethical authority.

In his letter he described his life as an indentured servant as one where he has nothing to comfort him but sickness and death. The life that he was living in colonial Virginia was one where you couldn’t escape or else you will be captured. Attempting it could of cause him to die, therefore he hoped his parents brought his escape but with his parents being poor there was no way of escaping the life of an indentured servant. Having no escape as an indentured servant, he wrote to his parents a letter asking that his parents bought out the indenture. In his letter, he wrote that he was trapped in a place filled of diseases that can make any body weak and leave you with lack of comfort and rattled with guilt.

The trade of African slaves in the 17th century was perceived as so commonplace that a good deal of the world's population gave it little or no thought. British involvement with slavery became unavoidable at the end of the 17th century, when abolitionist literature gained public attention. The first hand account of life as a slave in Olaudah Equiano's auto-biography was like no other piece of abolitionist literature at the time. The three methods of persuasion in his writing are ethical appealing ethos, logic engaging logos, and his most effective of emotional appealing pathos. Equiano's use of pathos in his auto-biography was effective in persuading the British that slavery is wrong, because of the emotional effects, such as misery, sympathy,

His “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave”, (Document G) makes emotional reading (lurid descriptions like "bitterest dregs of slavery" or "broken in body, mind, and soul" elicited reactions of disgust and dejection, which is the what abolitionists were hoping for) and showed that ultimately a slave, long thought to be a possession and less than human, was very much a person with reason and intellect. It provides unsurmountable proof that like any man, a slave deserved a life of dignity and liberty. His work shed light on the constant hard-working and abusive lifestyle that slaves

Equiano experienced the worst situation when his sister and him were taken as slaves. He was separated from his sister after being captured, and he never had the chance to see her again after that. As slave he used other names such as Gustavus Vassa which was given by British and American masters. He used that name for his book called “Equiano’s Travels : The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa the African” (Perkins 162). He fought to end slavery after writing his first African-American slave narrative and autobiography.