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Captivity Vs Equiano

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As we look at America today, we see a free, democratic nation that is a world power to be reckoned with. Although, before the fame and the glory, America had many struggles that the country and people had to deal with. I chose A Narrative of the Captivity by Mary Rowlandson and The Interesting Story of the life of Olaudah Equiano by Olaudah Equiano as my two pieces that I feel best represents the American experiences and struggles of the early colonial period. These two pieces best represent the struggles because they both deal with being a newcomer to a foreign country and greeting people not of the same language or culture. As a result, they represent the struggles of being a newcomer to early colonial America. A Narrative of the Captivity really represents the struggles of America because it shows the adversities the colonists dealt with when they started encountering the Native Americans. This piece was really about a woman that has baby …show more content…

Although, back then was a completely different story. The Interesting Story of the life of Olaudah Equiano by Olaudah Equiano shows not only the struggles of being a newcomer in America, but also the difficulties he had to persevere coming over. Slaves were considered property, and not humans, so they often received harsh treatment which sometimes even were serious injuries or death. “While we forgot our misfortunes in the joy of being together, but even that small comfort was soon to have an end”, Olaudah says and he is one of the many slave siblings that were torn apart by the selling and buying of slaves (Jefferson 57). This had to be devastating for him and his sister because not only are they thousands of miles away from home and family, but they were also torn from the little family they had left. All in all, Olaudah’s story represents the struggles of a newcomer to America in an acute way because he really, in a way, has lost everything he has ever

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In the documents “Considering the Evidence: Voices from the Slave Trade” it shows how the Atlantic slave trade was an enormous enterprise and enormously significant in modern world history. In document 15.1 - The Journey to Slavery it talks about the voice of an individual victim of the slave trade known as Olaudah Equiano. Equiano was taken from his home and sold into the slave trade. He worked for three different families while in the slave trade but what is different about him is that he learned to read and write while being a slave. He traveled extensively as a seaman aboard one of his masters' ships, and was allowed to buy his freedom in 1766.

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Mary Rowlandson and Olaudah Equiano: Comparing Captivity Experiences Americans have been intrigued by captivity novels and works for centuries. It could be the sense of danger and unpredictability that makes them so interesting and popular. Or maybe the idea that captivity was quite possible for readers in previous centuries made captivity narratives popular in Colonial Times. Speaking of Colonial Times, two popular captivity narratives that took place in that era that have many similarities and differences are; A Narrative of the Captivity of Mary Rowlandson and The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano.

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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.

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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.

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The autobiography “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano” of former slave Olaudah Equiano, is a detailed account of his journey, starting from the time he was kidnapped from his home, separated from his family, and later separated from his sister. He was eventually loaded into a slave ship, which sets sail for Barbados. The story continues through the time he was a slave until the time he bought his own freedom and, subsequently, write the autobiography. To help readers visualize the reality he lived through, Equiano uses in-depth descriptions of the experiences and conditions he endued in his journey. The transatlantic journey taken by Olaudah Equiano in “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano” demonstrate him to be curious, strong-willed, and frightened individual.

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The document of Mary Rowlandson’s time in captivity during King Philip’s War, is a very different primary source that truly shows a glimpse into the complexities and levels of depth of colonial relationships between Native Americans and English settlers. Rowlandson’s narrative details her harsh experiences as a captive of the native tribes and reveals her complex attitudes toward her captors. Despite the trauma and fear she experienced during her captivity, Rowlandson also expresses compassion and kindness towards her Native American captors. As hard as it might seem to understand how someone could possibly feel the way she did, there were many factors that led to her views, including her background, her connection to religion, and her overall

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Also, this document is important in the study of history because it shows first hand the experience of slavery and how terrible it was. It helps us learn about the hardships that some slaves had to go through when they didn’t deserve it and it helps people learn that slavery was a dehumanizing act and that no one should ever go through that again. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano was written in 1789 about his experiences as a slave. Olaudah Equiano was born in Nigeria on 1945 and was kidnapped at the age 11.

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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.

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Slavery is equally a mental and a physical prison. Frederick Douglass realized this follow-ing his time as both a slave and a fugitive slave. Douglass was born into slavery because of his mother’s status as a slave. He had little to go off regarding his age and lineage. In the excerpt of the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

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In the early 1980s Jack P. Greene and J. R. Pole reexamined a 1947 report conducted by Carl Bridenbaugh on early American history and culture. Greene and Pole commissioned historians who were educated in the time of the Bridenbaugh to write essays in their areas of focus, concentrating on aspects of social, political, and intellectual history. The essays written by these scholars were published in 1984 as Colonial British America. The collection of essays was partly intended to illustrate the missing and understudied elements Early America and argue the period is worthy of study on its own; not just as a period of time that ended in the American Revolution. On the topic of the four volume collection Greene and Pole state: “Several important

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Douglass encountered multiple harsh realities of being enslaved. For example, the ex-slave was practically starved to death by his masters on multiple occasions. In fact, “[He was] allowed less than a half of a bushel of corn-meal per week, and very little else... It was not enough for [him] to subsist upon... A great many times [he had] been nearly perishing with hunger” (pg 31).

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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.

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1086 Words | 5 Pages

His depiction of the conditions were as such “The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us”(Equiano 93). Along with the treatment from their captors “One day they had taken a number of fishes; and when they had killed and satisfied themselves with as many as they thought fit, to our astonishment, rather than give any of them to us to eat, they tossed the remaining fish into the sea again”(Equiano 94). America, the place of the “American dream” has not always been so accessible. Olaudah had to work hard for his owners to earn the money for his freedom. He then devoted himself to the abolishment of

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Captivity is defined as the state of being imprisoned or confined. A tragic experience is given a whole new perspective from Louise Erdrich 's poem, “Captivity”. Through descriptive imagery and a melancholic tone, we can see the poem and theme develop in her words. Erdrich takes a quote from Mary Rowlandson’s narrative about her imprisonment by the Native Americans and her response to this brings readers a different story based off of the epigraph. Louise Erdrich compiles various literary devices to convey her theme of sympathy, and her poem “Captivity” through specific and descriptive language brings a whole new meaning to Mary Rowlandson’s narrative.

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“A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mary Rowlandson”: The Influence of Intercultural Contact on Puritan Beliefs “A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson” by Mary Rowlandson gives a first person perspective into the circumstances of captivity and cultural interaction and an insight to Rowlandson 's attitude towards the Indians, both before and after she was held captive. Rowlandson displays a change in her perception of "civilized" and "savage", in spite of the fact that her overall world view does not alter. It should be covered below that in the following Essay, since the author and the narrator are the same person, will not be individually distinguished. For one thing, Mary Rowlandson provides all the conventions typical of a Puritan perspective.

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