Similarities Between Frederick Douglass And Olaudah Equiano

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is Douglass’s own account of his life as a slave, from birth on a rural plantation, to servitude in urban Baltimore, and at last to freedom in upstate New York. As was the case with many slave children, the date of Douglass’s birth is unknown though it is thought to be around 1817, soon after, he loses his mother, while his father is thought to be his master, Captain Anthony. By seven years old, he was given to his master’s son-in-law’s brother in Baltimore. Here Douglass experiences much more freedom, he even has the chance to learn to read, through which Douglass learns how to think and recognises the evils of slavery. When another master deems him ‘unmanageable,’ he is sent to Edward Covey, a particularly

Though at a much earlier point in the American institution of slavery, Olaudah Equiano shares a similar description of the cruel, brutal treatment he initially received on the journey to America. Even at a different point in time, with different experience, Equiano being shipped to America from Africa, and Douglass being born into slavery, the cruelty of the institution remains. Both Equiano and Douglass see this cruelty in the form of deprivation as well as physical and verbal aggression (Finkenbine, 12-15). In “A People’s History of the United States,” Howard Zinn does something similar. In his discussion of Slavery, in the many sources Zinn draws from, the reader sees again, the similarities in the brutal lives slaves led. The difference seen in some of Zinn’s sources is that not many of them are as eloquent and educated as Douglass comes across in his narrative. We see a different correlation rom A Slave Owner’s Journal at the End of the Civil War. This document is written after the emancipation of slaves and shows a much different view of the situation from the perspective of Henry William Ravenel. In his May 30, 1865 entry Ravenel says “my negroes all express the desire to remain with me… I believe it to be real and unfeigned” (Ravenel). When comparing this outlook to Douglass’s, it seems unlikely slaves would wish to stay with their master. Douglass yearned to be freed from his master for most of his enslavement, while these slaves wish to stay with their master after their legal emancipation. Compared to other accounts of slavery, Douglass seems to have had a tragically typical experience of a slave at his time, with the benefit of education and