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Slavery in america-history
Slavery in america-history
Slavery in america-history
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Slavery in america-history
Slavery in america-history
Slavery in america-history
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Olaudah Equiano arrived at the coast where he first saw the sea and a slave ship. He was carried onto the slave ship where he felt that bad spirits were around and the people there wanted to kill him. Equiano was generally fearful of everything on the ship, especially when he noticed that the crew looked and spoke differently than was used to. Horrors of the ship overpowered Equiano and he fainted on the deck. After awakening, Equiano realized that he has no change of returning to his native country.
The Slave Ship, by Marcus Rediker was wrote in 2007 about the cruel and brutal actions the slaves endured on their journey across the Atlantic Ocean. He states, “this has been a painful book to write, if I have done any justice to the subject, it will be a painful book to read.” Marcus Rediker accomplished exactly that. This book was not only compelling but emotional, heartbreaking, and makes a reader think, how could someone be so cruel to another living being. Within the first couple pages, the book brought me to tears.
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.
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
Most of the men had scars on their back. The scars were from the ship owners tying them up to a pole and hitting the slaves on the back with a whip. Also the slaves were very dirty. They were covered by other peoples waste because there wasnt any room for them to do their buisness. You could only lay on your side because there is too many people.
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.
For example, when he told of his arrival in Virginia when he was the last of his group left at a plantation with no one to talk to and no way to understand those around him. To the British readers, who thrived in their own daily social interactions, the thought of such a lonely situation created feelings of pity and understanding. Equiano thought that he was “worse off than any of the rest” of his companions and “was constantly grieving and pining,” because of his loneliness. The British readers related to his emotional distress and allowed themselves to see him as a person. Therefore, they were more open to his ideas on slavery as a whole, because they could relate to Equiano's
He describes the anguish, anxiety and despair that surrounded him on the slave ship with vivid detail. He leaves no detail spared as he describes slaves throwing themselves off of the boat seeing death as a better alternative than the fate that awaits them. Equino uses imagery in his text to show the reader the anguish they felt and appeals to the readers emotions to elicit a response to the wrongdoings of the white men that had enslaved them and kept them in such horrible conditions. For example he writes, “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 who were on the deck, rather than give any of them to us to eat, as we expected, they tossed the remaining fish into the sea again…”(pg. 173) this shows the reader the cruelty of the men on the boat and makes the reader feel an emotion.
Equiano discusses the ship's circumstances and the hardships the slaves faced throughout the story. The situation on board the ship is uncomfortable, even if the slaves were never released. "The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate added to the number in the ship, which was so crowded. Only those who made every effort to ruin the lives of others were granted freedom in the story of The Life of Olaudah Equiano. Equiano describes the circumstances of the ship and the hardships the slaves faced throughout the story.
I think equiano was successful and made it very clear that slavery is injustice. One example from the text was "refusing to eat, one of them held me fast by the hands and laid me across i think the windlass and tied my feet while the other flogged me severely." Clearly the white men were unfair with him for not accepting to eat what they had offered him. Some of the slaves had even considered dying rather than staying alive with them. The slaves would try to drown themselves onto the sea ,some were successful and passed away but those who got caught would get brought back to the ship and get punished and flogged severely. "
Olaudah Equiano at the tender age of eleven, experienced astonishment and terror as he was isolated from the only safe place he kenned, his habitation Igbo Land (present day Nigeria) by slave traders. His encounters with the slave trade was essentially filled with anguish, vexation, and dolefulness as he was stripped far from his family, particularly his sister, and the people that he bonded with on the ship heading to the various destinations. To describe his slave experience, he composed an extensive book from the perspective of the enslaved. Therefore, his book was instituted as the best artistic work of the abolitionist movement, and recently has turned into history 's most well known portrayal of the slave trade and the Middle Passage.
For several months he lived on the Mosquito Coast managing a plantation that relied on slave labor. Equiano did not become an abolitionist until shortly before he wrote his autobiography, a searing indictment of the slave trade and chattel slavery. It played a role in the abolition of the British slave trade (1807) and was the model for future slave narratives. In 1999 historian Vincent Carretta revealed findings that suggest Olaudah Equiano was not born free in Africa as he claimed but enslaved in South Carolina. Even if its passages on Africa and Middle Passage are historical fiction, The Interesting Narrative remains a classic and its author a remarkable man.
The most shocking thing is that even though going through what he went through, he himself once had slaves of his own. This is was the story of Equiano impacted me the most. One of the descriptive details that Equiano gives is when he arrives at the ship and sees people's faces and that they are chained together, “and saw a large furnace of copper boiling and a multitude of black people of every description chained together.” Equiano is already terrified that he was kidnapped and separated from his sister. Now seeing that the people that are on the ship look like him are being treated badly, might have made him even more terrified.
Narrative of Olaudah Equiano As a Slave The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, The African Written by Himself is an autobiography featured in, The Norton Anthology of African American Literature Third Edition Volume I edited by Henry Louis Gates,Jr. And Valerie A. Smith. Slavery is defined as a conditioned compared to that of a slave in respect of exhausting labor or restricted freedom. Equiano was captured and sold into slavery at the age of eleven years old. Usually, in history when you read about slavery you think about the harsh conditions that African Americans endured.
Revolving around his new found faith, Equiano begins to believe his situation is a result of God’s punishment for his sins, resigning himself to his new life. He is then sold yet again to a Mr. Robert King, a “charitable and humane” Quaker merchant, where Equiano is involved in a variety of positions, from loading boats to clerking and serving as a personal groom while being hired out to other merchants. Working on board the ship of one of King’s boat captains, Thomas Farmer, he becomes heavily reliant on Equiano and hires him for a multitude of journeys from the West Indies to North America, where he told Equiano’s master “[he] was better to him on board than any three white men he had” filling Equiano with a sense of pride and opportunity. Along with his educational knowledge this also gave Equiano a sense that he was not sub-ordinate to any white man purely as a result of the colour of his skin, as we have recently established “As early humans moved into hot, open environments in search of food and water, one big challenge was keeping cool. The adaptation that was favoured involved an