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Slaves: Symbolism And The Equiano Story

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Did you know that the average cost of a slave in America about 1850s was about $400, which as of today it would be about $12,000 ? “Slaves” come from the slavonic population in Eastern Europe, which they were also enslaved in the Middle Ages. A slave is defined when (slave)owners basically just take control of others and force them to obey their commands. When i was reading the Equiano, I noticed that him and his sister had got captured when they were little children and were brought on the ship where they were then labeled as slaves. They had no way to escape, they were trapped, there was no other way to get back to their hometown so they basically had nothing else to do but work for the slave masters. This was also a sad story about the children who are forced to work with no mercy …show more content…

They were used to work for people, all the slave masters had to do was sit back and watch them work in sweat and pain.They have to work to survive, they had no other choice. But we also have to work to survive and to keep ourselves from not struggling and out on the streets. They both had to work long hours everyday to know that they were able to go to sleep and night and wake up safely. They both had to work to make themselves look like they were doing a good deed and just follow what they were

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Chapter 3, The “Giddy Multitude”: The Hidden Origins of Slavery, in the book A Different Mirror focused the development of slavery in the Americas. Throughout the chapter, Takaki makes many references to Shakespeare’s, “The Tempest”, and relates much of what happened in this time period to the play. Takaki starts outs explaining the arrival colonists coming over as indentured servants. Although they were white, indentured servants were being outcasted by the wealthy white men. Their intentions of finding wealth and land were soon confuted by the discrimination they received.

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Equiano shows that freedom for slaves in the Atlantic ended up being a new kind of persecution because of the color of their skin. Throughout Equiano, prejudice is evident everywhere towards people of color. Because of this prejudice, Equiano sometimes thinks enslaved Africans were better off than freed slaves. Any slave or freed slave had no rights, but a slave had a master that would look out for him because he was the master’s property.

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Olaudah Equiano had not yet published his narrative when Voltaire imagined, in his novel 's Chapter 19, Candide and Cacambo meeting an articulate "negro" critic of the slave labor used on European sugar plantations. Re-read this passage in Candide: How do its insights into the realities of slavery compare and contrast with what you learn about the slave trade and slave labor from Equiano 's experiences? How do Equiano 's experiences in slavery compare and contrast with his descriptions of the slaves ' lives in his father 's household, when he was a young child? How does Equiano 's lack of critical stance against the slave holding practiced by his native Igbo culture either strengthen or undermine his argument against Europeans ' use of African

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These were not jobs that a paycheck was earned from or that one could call in sick to, this was forced labor in which some were beat into submission. The provisions for the slaves were different depending on who owned you, where you worked and what tasks were performed. Some slave had just the bare necessities, living in cramped quarters, with barely enough food to sustain life and work, with little hope for change. How do we know these things today seeing we have never been slave owners and there is no written instructional manual to teach an individual? We have the written and recorded accounts from former slaves, independent stories, exaggerated, some maybe slightly, but there is plenty of proof to these facts also.

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According to James Ramsey, the treatment and conditions of slaves in 1784 were harsh. They had to work long hours, from four in the morning to midnight, only eating 2 meals a day while doing harsh and intense labor everyday. (Doc 1) The source shows us that the slaves were treated harshly and did long, hard hours of work for the English while getting little to nothing in return. The slaves couldn’t even fight for themselves, they were helpless against the “superior” English.

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It also shows that they recognized their own value as human beings with souls, even in a system that sought to deny them that recognition. The profits that were generated off of slave labor helped build infrastructure, finance businesses, and support the growth of other industries through trade. This economic prosperity was built on the exploitation and dehumanization of enslaved individuals which perpetuate deep-rooted racial inequalities that still

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In The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Olaudah Equiano writes about his experiences as a slave. Beginning with his childhood, he tells of how he was kidnapped and traveled through the Bermuda Triangle, bought by his first white owner, and eventually gained his freedom. Although Equiano still considers himself an African at the end of his text, the text tells a different story about his transformation from an African to a British man. Considered to be a slave narrative by many critics because of its true stories about slavery, there are many issues with Equiano’s argument against slavery: Rather than asking that Britain completely rid of slavery, Equiano actually suggests that they create a new form of slavery which would allow Africans to assimilate to the white men through economic reforms such as paying the Africans for their work and using their land for production.

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These people were usually war prisoners or criminals who were seen as the “outsiders” in a class hierarchy. Even though some of these slaves were brutally treated and forced to work until death, some however, enjoyed a more filling and successful life. For example, some slaves worked for the state or in the households of their masters while others worked dreadfully in the mines. Also, some masters retired their slaves when they got too elderly to work efficiently. Also, others were granted their freedom after they had paid off a debt or could purchase their freedom.

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The primary source, “Olaudah Equiano on Slavery (1789)” reveals to its audience a first point of view of a child who undergoes the process of enslavement. Gustavus Vassa or better known as Olaudah Equiano was a mere child when he was abducted from his village; he describes his journey to the unknown with a flood of different emotions “[A]stonishment, which was soon converted into terror… [E]veryone of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow” indicates how African people were not fully aware of the situation of the outside world. Therefore, it was valid to say that Africans on board of a slave ship visualize the worse possible outcome, which in Equiano’s case was the anxiety of being devour by the white men.

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I think equiano was successful and made it very clear that slavery is injustice. One example from the text was "refusing to eat, one of them held me fast by the hands and laid me across i think the windlass and tied my feet while the other flogged me severely." Clearly the white men were unfair with him for not accepting to eat what they had offered him. Some of the slaves had even considered dying rather than staying alive with them. The slaves would try to drown themselves onto the sea ,some were successful and passed away but those who got caught would get brought back to the ship and get punished and flogged severely. "

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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

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Labor was the mechanism through which many people resisted their status as slaves, pivoted into lives of freedom, and earned their means to survive. Although enslaved people eventually obtained freedom, many continued into free life working jobs with which they had become familiar during their time in bondage. However, for many former slaves, labor could only be found through working available tasks under poor conditions. For men and women, these tasks were widely separate, with men often providing labor as public manual laborers, and women restricted to more private, domestic affairs. Therefore, occupations of freed people were often a continuation of similar duties performed while enslaved.

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While reading The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano, many questions arose in my head. I wanted to further my knowledge on multiple topics. The topic that stuck out to me the most was how the treatment of slaves differed throughout the book depending on their location. I analyzed the book into further detail on this topic. From Africa to England, Equiano experienced and observed many different treatment forms.

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They worked the farm plan and without them society could not function. They were also given the option to by there freedom by raising money through their work. In Athens slave were not citizens they were property. Lastly, Sparta had a far

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