ipl-logo

How Is Olaudah Portrayed As An American

964 Words4 Pages

Olaudah was a very well-articulated man in his autobiography and he had many thoughts expressed as an enslaved man towards the colonies and Philadelphia. Olaudah Equiano has been enslaved for many years after being taken from his homeland of Essaka. He wasn’t always in Philadelphia or in the colonies because of his master’s travels to many diverse places like the West Indies, Pennsylvania, London, England, Georgia, Louis borough Caribbean, and South Carolina. Olaudah was a very vigilant man in seeing the condition and treatment of his fellow brethren slaves in different places around the world. The more he saw the unkind treatment of slaves, the more and more he detests it.
Olaudah has been experiencing trauma of leaving his home when his …show more content…

Olaudah was thankfully treated respectably by most of his masters with the exception of Captain Pascal who took his money and sold him when he thought that Olaudah was going to leave him once in Philadelphia. One master took him to see and help out during the fight against Louis borough but while there he saw so much terror and violence, he started detaching himself from fear at a modest level. He saw Philadelphia in a good light with people buying his goods at a good rate, first seeing a Quaker church, and he admired the Quakers in them starting to let a lot of slaves free plus creating free schools for them and other people too. In Georgia, he didn’t really enjoy it when he was there because while he was there he was beaten by a drunken Dr. Perkins who doesn’t like foreign slaves in his fields but years later he was able to do a burial service in Georgia. Olaudah was very appalled by the West Indies after he has saw many despicable things done to slaves like the stealing of their possessions, flogging them, pleased their passions with slave females of most ages, cutting men’s legs off, hung, burnt, murdered, and …show more content…

The false sense of freedom came from hearing about a freeman named Joseph Clipson that was just taken up in Olaudah’s ship by a Bermudas captain and then took him away from his wife and kid to work in the West Indies. In many colonies, Olaudah still felt the oppression of the fear of bad white men who don’t care if you are a freeman but still will take you as slaves. Similar to the freeman’s experience, Olaudah was almost taken up as a slave when he unintentionally angered the Captain by denying his offer to work for him for wages then the Captain hoisted him up in rope in his own ship. In his words he said “Hitherto I had thought only slavery dreadful; but the state of a free negro appeared to me now equally so at least, and in some respects even worse; for they live in constant alarm for their liberty, which is but nominal; and they are universally insulted and plundered without the possibility of redress such being the equity of the West Indian laws .that no free negro’s evident will be admitted in their courts of justice”(pg

Show More
Related
1987 Words | 8 Pages

Olaudah Equiano and Fredrick Bruce Thomas were different but similar in many ways. They both faced many difficulties and had to overcome obstacles to become successful businessmen. They failed to overcome certain obstacles, but that did stop them from trying to succeed. They lived very differently from one another which also led them to both have success in a business aspect as well. To be able to compare and contrast these men, both of their stories need to be told to understand how these men succeeded and at times, failed.

Read More
324 Words | 2 Pages

Frederick Douglass and Olaudah Equiano are both great writers who sat down and wrote about their lives as slaves, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The narratives of Olaudah Equiano and Frederick Douglass are presently well known and read throughout the world. Frederick Douglass and Olaudah Equiano are not just writers who gained recognition for a fictional story that they made up, but they gained recognition for a real-life story that could be used to teach individuals a valuable lesson in life. These two great writers have contributed to more than just a narrative about themselves, but a text for society to learn from and gain knowledge. Even though these two individuals are quite unique, their writing styles are

Read More
679 Words | 3 Pages

The trade of African slaves in the 17th century was perceived as so commonplace that a good deal of the world's population gave it little or no thought. British involvement with slavery became unavoidable at the end of the 17th century, when abolitionist literature gained public attention. The first hand account of life as a slave in Olaudah Equiano's auto-biography was like no other piece of abolitionist literature at the time. The three methods of persuasion in his writing are ethical appealing ethos, logic engaging logos, and his most effective of emotional appealing pathos. Equiano's use of pathos in his auto-biography was effective in persuading the British that slavery is wrong, because of the emotional effects, such as misery, sympathy,

Read More
770 Words | 4 Pages

It is no secret that many Americans were held ransom by Native Americans, or that many African Americans were taken captive to be sold into the slave trade throughout the early American history. “Captivity narratives” are one of the main ways we learn today about the brave souls who overcame these hardships. A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Rowlandson and The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavas Vassa, the African are two very popular “captivity narratives” in American literature. Even though there are clear differences between the two narratives, surprisingly there are also a lot of similarities. During this essay the similarities and differences of Mrs. Rowlandson’s and Olaudah Equiano’s

Read More
683 Words | 3 Pages

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.

Read More
1759 Words | 8 Pages

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.

Read More
1146 Words | 5 Pages

Throughout Frederick Douglass’s Narrative, he recalls the inhumane acts that were thrusted upon him as a slave, but overcame the abuse of the common practice. Specifically, Douglass since childhood worked in a plantation as a slave, but from him learning to read and write, he escapes and teaches the people of the North the hardships of slavery, where he faced deprivation through exploitation, discovered there were more opportunities for slaves as he approaches the North, and gains power to change of his life due to his knowledge. For instance, the slaves were put into lower social positions than their masters through social manipulation, in ways of isolation and deprivation, so they would not leave the plantations. To illustrate, in the plantations many of “the white

Read More
1891 Words | 8 Pages

To assuage the problem, many European merchants bought slaves from the Black Sea region and the Balkans to work on farms (McKay 387). Although slavery was not built on the concept of racism during this time, the practice itself was undoubtedly violent. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano serves as a testament to the violence inherent in slavery. Equiano was a former slave captured from Africa and brought to America. During his time as a slave, he accounts: “...for my sister and I were then separated, while we lay clasped in each other's arms.

Read More
560 Words | 3 Pages

Olaudahs passage is a story that informs readers about his life as an African American and what it was like when he was a slave. His story begins from when he was tied up and thrown onto a ship and ends with how he got his freedom. Throughout the passage, Olaudah uses different writing techniques to create sympathy for African Americans that British citizens can feel. For one he uses rhetorical question technique which not only creates a sympathetic feeling, but makes the reader feel depressed as well as uneasy. Another writing technique used is personification which creates a very eerie, upsetting morbid feeling for the reader.

Read More
668 Words | 3 Pages

The Effect of the Single Story Single stories can have a significant effect on how we view a certain culture or race. It can both break their dignity and empower at the same time. I the Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, his struggle throughout his sufferable journey in slavery illustrates the theme in which Adichie represents, the theme regarding how a single story can control how we view a certain group of people. Throughout his life, Douglass experiences the harsh means of slavery and encounters each moment an African slave had to confront.

Read More
1454 Words | 6 Pages

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.

Read More
374 Words | 2 Pages

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.

Read More
860 Words | 4 Pages

Freedom was something not many people were given. In 1528, Bartolome de Las Casas wrote about the history of the Indies. Las Casas was a priest who didn’t like how the Spanish Empire treated the Indians. He wrote about their history to show just how cruel the Spanish empire really was. One of the many things he wrote to describe what the conditions were of the the Indians was, “The Indians [of Hispaniola] were totally deprived of their freedom and were put in the harshest, fiercest, most horrible servitude and captivity which no one who has not seen it can understand” (Foner, 36).

Read More
1221 Words | 5 Pages

Ohiyesa’s The Soul of the Indian gives a nostalgic critique on the encroachment of white civilization on the Native American culture, citing the parallelisms the two societies share and explaining the reasoning behind Native American rituals. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass gives a glimpse into the life of a slave, comparing the life of the free and the enslaved, and giving reason to the actions of the slave and slave master. Throughout each book, it becomes apparent that each has a common trait: the white population’s use of religion as a means for their cruelty. To clarify, religion is used as a justification for their respective instances of oppression, both the purge of Native Americans and Native American culture for Ohiyesa, and slavery for Douglass. Although they experience different systems of oppression, Douglass and Ohiyesa see how the corruption of religion can be used by the white majority to assert themselves as masters to their respective peoples.

Read More
298 Words | 2 Pages

(1) In this reading I learned about Olaudah EquianoIn. Olaudah Equianoln is known for a book he published which was about his life as a slave. His book was consider to have had such an impact on american readers and was said that no other black man before Douglass had created such a moving book. In his book he speaks of things from his kidnapping to the violence and abuse he endured as a slave. In conclusion, Olaudah was a former slave who wrote a book about his life which was very sad, motivational and makes me tear up thinking about the physical and emotional pain he endeared.

Read More

More about How Is Olaudah Portrayed As An American

Related Topics

Open Document