Kassandra Santiesteban Olaudah Equiano’s Life as a Slave Olaudah Equiano was a former slave, merchant and seaman, who wrote an autobiography about the horrors he experienced while being a slave. Equiano was kidnapped and sold into slavery as a young child in Nigeria. Afterwards, he endured a passage on a slave ship headed to the new world, where he continued his life as a slave, but in a new surrounding with different circumstances. In his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, he writes about the life of both a slave and a free black man. But Equiano centers his work mostly around the horrific lives of slaves on both sides of the Atlantic (Africa and America). At the beginning of The Interesting Narrative …show more content…
He was kidnapped from his own family in Africa and was boarded onto a slave ship headed to America. He wrote about how they had kidnapped his sister and him and put restraints on their mouth; when they finally stopped they were “unbound, but unable to eat” (ch. 2, par. 4), unlike slavery in Africa where they were given meals daily. As he begins writing about the next day, he mentions how the only comfort he had was being by his sister, which then he was forbidden that as well. Equiano evokes the feeling of hopelessness that he felt at that moment by adding sarcasm to his situation when he said “But alas! we were soon deprived of even the small comfort of weeping together” (ch. 2, par. 5). Equiano’s confusion and terror during his kidnapping shows the emotions that all the Africans, that were taken from their family and given all these unfortunate circumstances, were probably feeling. He then went on to talk about how he was finally given a decent master that “used him extremely well” (ch. 2, par. 6) and would comfort him; this lasted about a month, when he was boarded on a ship to America. He wrote about the horrors of the Middle Passage, and how “some of the women, as well as men, jump into the water, dive to the bottom, come up again and swim about” (ch. 2, par. 18); they did this in order to flee from the ship and hopefully be able to swim to their home. Most of them were prevented from …show more content…
He starts to take an interest in educating himself on religion and reading. He then learns how to read when two women, white women, sent him to school. He begins to view himself as more of a European than an African: “I not only felt myself quite easy with these new countrymen, but relished their society and manners... I had the stronger desire to resemble them, to imbibe their spirit, and imitate their manners. I therefore embraced every occasion of improvement, and every new thing that I observed I treasured up in my memory” (ch. 4, par 1). Equiano grew very happily of his master, until he was demanded to return to Portsmouth. This is when he thought “now of nothing but being freed, and working” (ch. 4, par. 5). This shows Equiano’s confliction about his thoughts on slavery; he went from wanting to be like the masters (which did not complain about slavery, but encouraged it), to wanting to demolish