Analysis Of The Interesting Narrative By Olaudah Equiano

The temptation in reviewing The Interesting Narrative is to dust off aphorisms about the nature of history and the purpose of history and whose job it is to define history. As an autobiography, Olaudah Equiano’s story can and should be scrutinized as something short of an ideal account. There are numerous passages that have been debunked by scholars, and more than a few devices that seem to have been lifted whole cloth from other best-sellers of the day. Equiano repeatedly emphasized his relative good fortune, and in light of the fact that he has managed to dodge the reputation of a charlatan, he appears to have been blessed with prescience as well as humility. Yet to analyze The Interesting Narrative in terms of objective truth in the way one might delve into A

His faith informs every word of his autobiography, from the ways in which he labors to present the tribe of his youth as not dissimilar in values to his adopted Methodism to the charitable descriptions of the corrupt, heartless masters with whom he was forced to contend to his gratitude at his rise from chattel to English gentleman. Although he is critical of the hypocrisy and amorality inherent in the slave trade, his prose is remarkably devoid of anger, but for certain biblically derived pleas clearly meant to resonate with the rational Christians among his audience. Equiano’s reference to “nominal Christians” can only be seen by the modern reader as an attempt to confirm suspicions among his audience that certain members of certain Christian sects were not as personally beholden to the Word of God as others, a valid view from any perspective, let alone that of a freedman. Equiano would have been a fool not to exploit the divide that still existed among European Christians at the time of The Interesting Narrative’s