The Desire for Freedom Mary prince had suffered from an unfortunate life, she was worked to the bone and kept like an animal, but even in her worse of times she never gave up hope. Olaudah Equiano had also suffered from slavery, but in his case it was a more fortunate one, he was more of a witness of such crimes against slaves, during the middle passage Equiano speaks of the horrors he saw, the smells, the ear wrenching cries and the overall atmosphere of the ship’s hull, where Mary herself was the one taking on the punishment for even the smallest infractions from her slave masters. When it comes to both of their stories, they both decided that they were stories that should be told, not just so they could tell it, but so people knew of such ways other …show more content…
Even though the world is sometimes cruel, they made it clear that one should never give up hope. Both Mary Prince and Equiano spoke of their early days as happy and care free, Although Mary was already a slave as a child, she still was content in that she knew no better, it wasn’t until later in life that she was brought to face the realities of what she was. Equiano’s family was a prominent one in their village and he himself had slaves, but treated them like family. Equiano then stolen from his home as a child and then forced into slavery; it was then that he learned truly what slavery was.
Equiano was lucky in the sense that he was able to obtain an education through his master who sent him to England for just that reason; Mary was only able to obtain small amounts of education when she would walk
Equiano had many slave owners and two of them had a great influence in his life. Equiano had a horrible experience that he tried to end his life just to escape from being a slave. As days passed his life seemed to be getting easier. As a child Equiano and his sister where taken far away.
In all captivity stories, a main element is reading about how the captors treated those they kidnapped. The narratives by Mary Rowlandson and Olaudah Equiano both contain a lot of these experiences. Both of them had hardships to overcome throughout the story. During their journeys,
Olaudah Equiano and Frederick Douglass, both experienced the hardship of enslavement at a youthful age. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they both wrote narratives explaining the lives they experienced as slaves or expressed the lives slaves lived. During this time period, slaves experienced miserable lifestyles, along with unforgettable scarring moments forced upon them by their commanders. Although they lived in different time periods, both of their narratives about the life of slavery to freedom have similar and dissimilar details. Their personal first-handed narratives presented to the world the harsh treatment slaves endured and the weakness they must show to survive.
Marlow 1 Kevin R. Marlow Professor Gravely English 2110 2 April 2017 Comparing and Contrasting the Narratives of Mary Rowlandson and Olaudah Equiano Today, many great movies and novels are written about captivity stories. Quite recently, the movie, 12 Years a Slave, received several awards for it’s true to life depiction of Solomon Northup, who was a free man who was wrongly enslaved and taken away from his family. These stories have been popular for many years, and the 17th century was no different. The stories of Mary Rowlandson and Olaudah Equiano are two such stories.
Such stories were regularly utilized as promulgation or propaganda: accordingly, Europeans frequently stereotyped Native Americans as merciless and whites started to see subjugation of African-Americans as detestable. The purpose of this essay is to compare and contrast the two narratives which are A Narrative of the Captivity and The interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equianoa. A Narrative of Captivity by Mary Rowlandson and The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano by Olaudah Equiano are two generally read imprisonment accounts , which, individually, relate the encounters of a grown-up white lady caught by Indians and an eleven-year-old Black male caught for the American slave market. Looking at these two accounts uncovers fascinating similitudes and contrasts and in addition in the encounters and responses of these two prisoners.
When possible, Equiano feeds his thirst for religious and educational knowledge. Spending the majority of his life both as a slave and as a free man overseas in a series of dangerous voyages throughout the Mediterranean, Atlantic and West Indian Oceans he believed the kindness shown by Pascal, coupled with his years of service was to secure his freedom. Until Pascal had him seized and forced onto a barge where he was later sold to Captain James Doran, bound for the West Indies. With his knew found knowledge, Equiano argues with Captain Doran, explaining to his new master that Pascal "could not sell me to him, nor to anyone else . . . I have served him . . .
In Olaudah Equiano’s narrative, he demonstrates an oppressive tone in order to create sympathy for the slaves. For example, when the slaves pack onto the ships, the author describes, “[that] the stench…was so intolerably loathsome…it was dangerous to remain there” (Equiano 45). The diction Equiano uses such as, “stench” and “intolerably loathsome” leads to an increased amount of sympathy for the slaves suffering in the horrendous conditions. Equiano illuminates the dehumanization of the black slaves by describing the atrocities of where they survive. Furthermore, after days without food, instead of providing the slaves with much needed food, the whites simply, “tossed the remaining fish in the sea...although [the slaves] begged and pleaded
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano is a very interesting autobiography of a man of African descent, who paints a picture for the readers as he takes us back through his journey of being born into a life with freedom, being captured and sold away into slavery, and later on buying his own freedom back. In the story, Mr. Equiano goes into great detail when describing his life as a slave, from his journey across Africa to his many voyages around the world. He narrates from a very dramatic perspective, which gives the reader a good vison of what is going on. Later on in life, Equiano decides to become a spokesman for the freedom of African slaves and writes his autobiography to have his voice heard. After publishing his book,
From the very beginning of the seventeenth century, America depended on slaves for free labor in order to make a considerable profit. These slaves were not treated as normal people though; they were sold into a life of no rights, cruel punishment, and rigorous work schedules. In his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, freed slave Frederick Douglass shares his personal accounts with slavery in order to reveal the harsh truth slavery hides to the public. Throughout his narrative, Douglass uses specific maritime allusions as well as vivid diction, oxymorons and anaphora to persuade the reader to think more philosophically about oppression and in turn ask the question, ‘what does it truly take to be free?’.
Interesting Narrative by O. Equiano gives his view as a free man, and then growing up in slave trade during this time in the European and African cultures. Equiano had hoped to give hope with his narrative, and show the reality to everyone not only his fellow Negros. Giving explicit, in-depth detail of how everything happened and how his world changed rapidly as well as everyone else involved in the Slave trade, whether being an owner, buyer, seller, or "item", everyone changed for the worse. Nothing was being done about these matters, so Equiano learned to read and write, and wrote his narrative to give a piece of history to his people and give them a meaning for all their hardships and tremendous pain while during the sixteenth and nineteenth
Both stories begin with shocking horrors, although much of Equiano’s narrative was based on these horrific scenes. Equiano’s survival of his involuntary journey to America, being enslaved as a child, and witnessing torture in Virginia, should be of aid towards the disapproval of the brutality of slavery. After buying his own freedom, Equiano became a front-runner in the abolitionist movement representing those who stood against slavery. Now in the 21st century we still fight for the freedom and self-respect we find in Equiano’s narrative. Rowlandson’s and Equiano’s narratives each represent a different characteristic of what it means to be part of the American nation.
In her narrative The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian slave, related by herself, published in 1831. Mary Prince writes, 'I have been a slave, I have felt what a slave feels and I know what a slave knows and I would have all the good people in England to know it too, what a slave has felt and suffered.' Mary Prince's account of her life gives us an insight into the life of an enslaved woman in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
17.1 Captivity and Enslavement, Olaudah Equiano, the interesting Narrative of the life of Olaudah Equiano written by himself 1. What are Equiano’s impressions of the white men on the ship and their treatment of the slaves? How does this treatment reflect the slave traders’ primary concerns? Equiano’s first impression of these white men is a feeling of uncertainty and sorrow for the future. As his story goes on Equiano is afraid of these white men, but also he is wishing to end it all because of the conditions and treatment of the slaves.
There is no captivity novel that contains nothing but pleasure and comfort. In other words, every captivity novel contains a large amount of sorrow. In the narratives, Mary Rowlandson and Olaudah Equiano both experienced massive amounts of misfortune during their periods of captivity. For example, Rowlandson writes of her daughter dying from wounds she sustained during the mass kidnapping, murder, and pillage
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano presented English identity as the epitome of modernity, and the mark of cultural maturity. Rather than being a set racial or national identity Equiano portrayed Englishness as an achievable goal, even for a racially black man. The Narrative intentionally depicted Equiano’s transformation from African boy to Englishman as a positive change. Through the portrayal of his life as a struggle to become an Englishman; and his telling of a willing adoption of Anglican religion and cultural values, Olaudah Equiano purposefully appealed to the paternalistic nature of the English in order to advocate for the abolition of slavery.