...The Autobiography of Olaudah Equiano is a woeful recount of an African boy who was kidnapped into slavery. However, with the story of Olaudah Equiano comes a question. Was Equiano an African who merely wanted to share his life’s story or was he born in South Carolina and wrote this as a calculated attempt to “increase the odium against the West India planters?” as Vincent Carretta states. If the first presumption is correct, then all is well and the story can be revered as a highly respected expositional work of history. Although, if the second is correct, then this calls into question Equiano’s right to play the victim in representing the slaves who suffered through the Middle Passage. The answer to this highly debated question lies in the accuracy of his details, the historical validity of his stories, and the fact that pro-slavery writers are the source of the original doubt. In his autobiography, Olaudah Equiano describes his experience of the Middle Passage with many details. For example, one of the most notable details he notes of the slave ship was the horrible stench that reeked from the lower deck. Equiano writes, “I was soon put down under the decks, and there I received such a...
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...Olaudah Equiano, was a former enslaved African, seaman and merchant who wrote an autobiography depicting the horrors of slavery and lobbied Parliament for its abolition. In his biography, he records he was born in what is now Nigeria, kidnapped and sold into slavery as a child. He then endured the middle passage on a slave ship bound for the New World. After a short period of time in Barbados, Equiano was shipped to Virginia and put to work weeding grass and gathering stones. In 1757, he was bought by a naval captain (Captain Pascal) for about £40, who named him Gustavas Vassa. Equiano was about 12 when he first arrived in England. For part of that time he stayed at Blackheath in London with the Guerin family (relatives of Pascal). It...
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...Feb.02, 2001 Olaudah Equiano In 1745, Olaudah Equiano was born in a small village in Isseke,Nigeria. His father was one of the chiefs in the village. At age eleven Equiano and his sister were kidnapped by two men and a woman never to see his home or parents again. After being kidnapped he was hiked across part of Africa untill he arrived at the coast where he was loaded onto a slave ship. While crossing the Atlantic to Barbados onboard the slave ship he and his countrymen were subject to horrors you could hardly imagine. Equiano tells about the horrors and torture slaves face not only on the slave ship but also on plantations and many other aspects of a slave's life. Equiano experienced almost all parts of a slave's existence. He was a slave throughout Africa, England, and the New World. Equiano is bought and sold several times. Religion also played a huge role in Equiano's life and I think that it helped him get through some really hard times. He is bought by a British Naval officer and serves in the British Navy during the Seven Years' War. He is then sold to Robert King where he begins trading goods between islands and eventually makes enough money to buy his freedom. Equiano tells of the joy he feels when he becomes a free man. The rest of his life is devoted to helping slaves and to the cause of abolishing slavery. In 1756 Olaudah Equino was kidnapped and taken to a slave ship which is when his nightmare and battle with slavery began. Equiano and his countrymen were chained...
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...contradicts the idea that everyone comes to America for freedom and opportunity. One slave in particular by the name of Olaudah Equiano tells of his supposed experience in the slave trade business. Equiano and his younger sister were kidnapped by Europeans and taken from their home in central Africa and shipped to the West Indies to be traded. He explains the fear and confusion he felt while on the crowded, disease-ridden boat that carried him to slavery: “Indeed such were the horrors of my views and fears at the moment, that, if ten thousand worlds had been my own, I would have freely parted with them all to have exchanged my condition with that of the meanest slave in my own country” (Equiano 2). The conditions that the soon-to-be slaves were faced with on the boat were dangerous and unbearable, and for that reason many did not survive the journey or arrived to the Americas on their deathbed. After landing on the island of Barbadoes, Equiano and the other slaves were pushed around and forced into very labor intensive jobs. Equiano's attitude towards the whites that captured him is clearly displayed in this excerpt from his narrative: “Every circumstance I met with served only to render my state more painful, and heighten my apprehensions, and my opinion of the cruelty of the whites” (Equiano 5). Although there is speculation surrounding the legitimacy of Equiano’s story, the story he tells was sadly the truth for millions of innocent people. This story represents the unfortunate...
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...Kathya Delgado Spring 2013 2649908 Equiano’s Battle: Faith and Perseverance It was no secret the sufferings and renderings many slaves had came across during “The Middle Passage”; it wasn’t just torture and pain but most of all self discovery of their new reality. Despite from Equiano has known from his childhood in his homeland, it was a constant battle of the acceptance, exploration, and assessment new ideas or concepts into his new destined reality. In this passage, the floods of new traditions, cultures, languages, beliefs, and customs was permeating the through the soul of Equiano. However, through the good and the bad, Equiano even at his lowest never gave up on faith. Olaudan Equiano has always made faith the foundation of his acceptance of European religion/customs while also getting maintaining self righteous individuality. To truly understand the battle of individuality and beliefs Equiano felt during his lifetime, one must be familiar with his childhood. Equiano explained that the natives in his tribe already believe in one Creator and have accepted the fact the he governs events and also the concept of eternity or “afterlife” reflect upon his actions. The idea of faith and destiny was greatly rooted in Equiano, that the minute they captured Equiano and his sister away from his family he already knew this was his destiny for he mentioned “ but alas! Ere long it was my fate to be thus attacked, to be carried off” (Equiano, 1999). Equiano depended much on his...
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...Olaudah Equiano The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African First Published London, 1789 NOTE: the following text is one African’s account of the “middle passage”: the horrible trip that slaves had to endure to arrive in the Americas. Slaves were captured in Africa, carried to the seacoast, sold to European traders, then carried on slave ships to the New World. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: 1) To what extent is African slavery, as described in Equiano’s account, different from slavery practiced by Europeans in the Atlantic economy? 2) Based on information in this passage, to what extent can white people be blamed for the African slave trade? 3) Equiano later rose to be an advocate for the abolition of the slave trade. To what degree do you think that his biography is biased, colored by his political agenda? 1. I hope the reader will not think I have trespassed on his patience in introducing myself to him with some account of the manners and customs of my country. They had been implanted in me with great care, and made an impression on my mind, which time could not erase, and which all the adversity and variety of fortune I have since experienced served only to rivet and record; for, whether the love of one's country be real or imaginary, or a lesson of reason, or an instinct of nature, I still look back with pleasure on the first scenes of my life, though that pleasure has been for the most part mingled...
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