Although Olaudah Equiano appears as a strong and intelligent man throughout his narrative that did not stop him from being abducted from his culturally rich home and shipped away to a country where he was forced into slavery because of the color of his skin. The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano served as an anti-slavery piece because Equiano shares his personal story about slavery that invokes strong emotions. Throughout the narrative Olaudah Equiano was given multiple names by his slave masters in an attempt to take away his self-identity. Furthermore, he was held as a slave because of the color of his skin, not because he was a criminal or a prisoner of war. Lastly and most obvious, Olaudah Equiano served as an eye witness to the …show more content…
The first horrible act was when Equiano was kidnapped with his sister in chapter one, when “two men and a woman” (Equiano 12) stole them away and took them to the woods. Olaudah Equiano “cried and grieved continually” (Equiano 12) when he and his sister, the only family or comfort he had left was taken away from him. To think of all the children separated from their families during the slave trade, one can only imagine the heart break and emotional wreckage this caused. Another example of the horrors of slavery was in chapter three, however this example of cruelty was more physical. While on a plantation, Olaudah Equiano was sent inside the estate to fan his ill master and when he walked in he saw a black woman which had on an iron muzzle that “locked her mouth so fast that she could scarcely speak; and could not eat or drink” (Equiano 21). Further along in Equiano’s narrative he wrote about another instance of physical abuse in chapter five, he said he saw a black man who was “beaten til some of his bones were broken” (Equiano 46) just for letting a pot boil over. Today treatment like this would be deemed completely illegal, unethical, and unacceptable and yet this is only a handful of examples from his text that prove this to be an anti-slavery