Equiano Equaino Olaudah: A Life Of A Slave

He travelled a lot. To the Mediterranean, the Atlantic and the Arctic as he attempted to reach the North Pole. When returning to London, he came into contact with an anti-slavery campaigner, Granville Sharp when Equiano had heard his friend, John Annis, a former African American cook and a freed slave, was kidnapped by John’s former owner. Equiano and Sharp tried to save Annis but didn’t make it.

Toni Morrison theorized that “With typically eighteenth-century reticence [Olaudah Equiano] records his singular and representative life for one purpose; to change things,” (512). He wanted to challenge the way people viewed slavery. History explains the gruesome and disturbing past that the African slaves experienced in terms of being owned, abused, and controlled under barbaric behaviors of white men. Due to the devastating and unthinkable actions committed to the African slaves, they were unable to share their mistreatment with the world and their voice was forced to stay silent. In literary works, people are able to become a voice throughout history, and because African slaves were kept quiet, they did not get the change to share with the

17.1 Captivity and Enslavement, Olaudah Equiano, the interesting Narrative of the life of Olaudah Equiano written by himself

Throughout the book we see occasions on how Equiano was lucky such as, he was able to buy his freedom, tried to run away and was not punished, and was able to improve his education. Equiano accomplished to gain his freedom which is something that most slaves found impossible to do. One of the reasons Equiano was able to buy his freedom is because of his captain. For example “ I verily believe I should not have obtained my freedom when I did; and it not improbable that I might not have been able to get it any rate afterwards.” (The Interesting Narrative of Oladuah Equiano p.107)

Born around 1745, Equiano lived a relatively noble childhood in his village of Essaka until local raiders captured him and sold him, beginning his lifelong struggle against slavery. (Edwards 44) As his expeditions and experiences with his masters began to amass, his anti-slavery rhetoric developed as well. By the 1780’s, Equiano “had become deeply involved in the politics of the black people, championing their cause” by forging relationships with white abolitionists such as Granville Sharp and by advocating for the publicizing of atrocities inflicted on slaves (Mtubani 90). Equiano, because of his unfortunate upheaval into the throes of slavery as a child, quickly became much more than a historical individual; he became a pivotal champion for the rights of his people as freemen and as

He later gained his freedom and moved to England. While he was there he became a Christian and did missionary work. He was an abolitionist and he wrote his auto-biography. When Equiano got on the boat, he was afraid the Europeans were going to kill him. He looked around the boat and saw black people chained together with sad looks on their faces.

Did you know that the average cost of a slave in America about 1850s was about $400, which as of today it would be about $12,000 ? “Slaves” come from the slavonic population in Eastern Europe, which they were also enslaved in the Middle Ages. A slave is defined when (slave)owners basically just take control of others and force them to obey their commands. When i was reading the Equiano, I noticed that him and his sister had got captured when they were little children and were brought on the ship where they were then labeled as slaves. They had no way to escape, they were trapped, there was no other way to get back to their hometown so they basically had nothing else to do but work for the slave masters. This was also a sad story about the children who are forced to work with no mercy

This chapter addresses the central argument that African history and the lives of Africans are often dismissed. For example, the author underlines that approximately 50,000 African captives were taken to the Dutch Caribbean while 1,600,000 were sent to the French Caribbean. In addition, Painter provides excerpts from the memoirs of ex-slaves, Equiano and Ayuba in which they recount their personal experience as slaves. This is important because the author carefully presents the topic of slaves as not just numbers, but as individual people. In contrast, in my high school’s world history class, I can profoundly recall reading an excerpt from a European man in the early colonialism period which described his experience when he first encountered the African people.

These stories are quite different; Equiano was sold, Smith was adopted, and Equino was aboard the ship throughout the story, Smiths story went everywhere he went in the new world and a small portion of his voyage there. Even though both stories are their first hand-experiences,

Mary and Equiano are kidnapped in ways that are alike and different. For example, Mary is carried away during a Wampanoag raiding that wanted to trade hostages for money. This raiding was caused by Metacomet’s former assistant giving information to the colonists. Equiano was kidnapped from his house by African raiders involved in the slave trade.

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

In The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Olaudah Equiano writes about his experiences as a slave. Beginning with his childhood, he tells of how he was kidnapped and traveled through the Bermuda Triangle, bought by his first white owner, and eventually gained his freedom. Although Equiano still considers himself an African at the end of his text, the text tells a different story about his transformation from an African to a British man. Considered to be a slave narrative by many critics because of its true stories about slavery, there are many issues with Equiano’s argument against slavery: Rather than asking that Britain completely rid of slavery, Equiano actually suggests that they create a new form of slavery which would allow Africans to assimilate to the white men through economic reforms such as paying the Africans for their work and using their land for production.

Another ship disappeared. All that was left from the original fleet of five ships was Drake 's 100-ton flagship, the Pelican. He later changed the name to the Golden Hind. He sailed to Chile and Peru to plunder unprotected Spanish merchant ships filled with bullion. Drake was said to have landed near what is now San Francisco and claimed the land around it, naming the land New Albion for Queen Elizabeth.

Equiano wrote “one of them held me fast by the hands, and laid

The worst bearing of both Rowlandson and Equiano has to face was being separated from their own love ones. Rowlandson was separated from her family and relations when her village was attacked then eventually lost her only child that was with her. Nevertheless, Equiano also endured tormented pain when he was parted from his sister while she was the only comfort to him at once. He was a young boy in a fearful atmosphere with nothing to convey a positive perspective. “It was vain that [they] besought than not to part us; she was torn from [him], and immediately carried away, while [he] was left in a state of distraction not to be describe”.