Pathos: The Autobiography Of Olaudah Equiano

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During the 18th century, Britain prided themselves with their constitution and individual liberty, however their economy was heavily based on the slave trade. During this time the triangular trade was in place and was transporting 40,000 African Americans on this horrific journey to the New World in exchange for goods such as tobacco, rum, etc. The Romantic poets during this time had a major impact on this matter and in 1780 most of the major poets were writing for this cause. With the help of these romantics who brought up many debates, the Emancipation bill was enacted in 1833 and freed about 800,000 slaves. The autobiography of a man named Olaudah Equiano had a great impact on the abolition of slavery, where in his autobiography he …show more content…

Pathos, as opposed to ethos and logos is a more personal approach, where ethos is a credibility approach and logos is a logical approach. Pathos would have to be the strongest of the appeals because in an autobiography the author may want the reader to think about what it would be like to be in whatever position the author may be. Pathos, through emotion is able to do that. Throughout Equianos excerpts from his autobiography, he uses pathos to change the reader’s emotions. Some examples of the use of pathos come from “Chapter 4, Sold Again”, it seems that everything is going good, because a man named Daniel Queen was educating him and even became a father figure to him. Then everything abruptly changed when his master decided to sell him and threatened to kill him if he were to get out of his sight. This part of the text changed everything and may even sadden the reader because while reading this part of the text the reader, may think about being in Equianos shoes and how horrible that may be. Equianos needs to make the reader sympathize for him in order to make the reader realize the horrid conditions that he went through in his struggle through