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Compare and contrast between European and African
Slavery from the slaves perspective
Slavery and civil rights movement
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Recommended: Compare and contrast between European and African
Many African Americans were unwillingly bound in a life of servitude as the property of a slaveholder or household which inhibited their opportunity to escape the unforeseen hazards that would come from the grasp of slavery. Becoming a slave limited African American's ability to become educated and produced a life of captivity that many did not escape due to the trials and tribulations from their new life-styles. Olaudah Equiano was amongst the few who were able to contrive a plan of action to overcome the torments of slavery and experience a life of freedom, out of slavery. Equiano's sensible and psychological methods supply the means for him to earn his freedom. Equiano's "Interesting Narrative" illustrates his fight with slavery and his achievement in over-coming slavery and his victory in earning freedom.
Without Equiano's sensible strategies, he would never have lived to be able to purchase his freedom. The most sensible plan that Equiano develop was the ability and wanting in learning the English language. By learning the English language, he was able to communicate with his owners, as well as other whites. This ability allowed him to overcome the obstacle of not being able to understand or communicate with his new environment and allowed him to be recognized amongst common slaves. This allowed Equiano to escape his slaveholder's unjust idea that the enslavement was justified due to the fact that slaves were unequal. If this opportunity did not present itself, the opportunity for him to be able to communicate with those who helped him escape slavery who have never been experience. Thus, the achievement of learning a new language allowed Equiano to overcome his fear of the white man.
After Equiano overcomes the fear that his owners are of a supernatural force that may kill and eat him, he begins to try to befriend his masters and act in ways to please them. On his venture to London, he becomes acquainted with Richard Baker. They become close on their trip and are viewed as brothers. His fondness of the white culture sets him apart from the other slaves; therefore, Baker furthers Equiano's studies of English which allows him to become a favorite above all slaves. He states, "I not only felt myself quite easy with these new countrymen, but relished their society and manners" (792). Equiano aims to please the white man. If Equiano viewed whites as oppressors and began to view all whites with hate, he would have inhibited himself from the necessities of earning freedom.
Both, “The Interesting Narrative Life of Olaudah Equiano” and “Amistad” are important stories about slavery in pre-civil war america because they both address the issues of slavery. These gentlemen in the story made a difference in the slave trade. In “The life of Olaudah Equiano”, Olaudah was sold on a slave ship that came to the Barbados. Olaudah worked for his freedom, and in the end became efficient in American language. He worked his way to the free life and in the end it worked out for him, although it leaves scars on his soul. In “Amistad”, Cinque is a slave that leads a revolt on a slave ship after escaping. When they get to america, Baldwin, a lawyer that is representing the slave and the former president Adams helps free the slaves.
Equiano was the youngest of his brothers who enjoyed playing outside throwing javelins enjoying the normal life of a small child. At the beginning of the day, the elders would leave their children at home while they went out into the fields to work. While they were gone, some of the children would get together to play but always took precautions of potential kidnappers. Even with all these precautions, people were still seized from their homes and taken away. Equiano was home one day with his little sister tending to the everyday household needs when out of nowhere they were captured by a couple men who had gotten over the walls. They had no time to resist or scream for help before they found themselves bound, gagged, and being taken away. Equiano had no idea where these people were taking him and they didn’t stop once until nightfall where they stayed until dawn. He tells us about how they traveled for many days and nights not having any clue where they were going or when they would get there. Slaves traveled by land and by sea, but Equiano’s journey was by sea. He tells us how he was carried aboard and immediately chained to other African Americans that were already on the ship. Once the ship halted on land, Equiano along with many other slaves were sent to the merchant’s yard where they would be herded together and bought by the
Document One The Journey to Slavery is about the life of Olaudah Equiano. Equiano was born in what is now Nigeria in 1745. At the age of 11 Equiano and his younger sister were taken from their home, drug though the woods, sold, and was then separated from one another. Equiano’s experience was considered very rare. Throughout his life as a slave he had three different owners. Equiano went from one master to the other till he ended up in a pleasant country in the hands of a leader with children and two wives. He describes how his owners treated him like he was part of the family. They spoke he same
Equiano argues and presses the reader and his audience to recognize that the African slave and the white slave owner are not as different as his audience may believe. In order to proclaim and showcase this idea of the value and worth of African slaves, Equiano uses the Christian religion to develop and sustain his argument. In many cases during Equiano’s time period, and for a while afterwards, Christianity and the Bible were used in defense of slavery, and this fact makes Equiano’s claim more powerful and groundbreaking. One of the key attributes of the novel is Equiano’s spiritual conversion and religious revelations. I believe that Equiano’s Christianity serves to connect him with his audience, increases his credibility as an author, and ultimately proclaims the disparity between the views of the slaves’ worth as merely economical, and the assumed Christian morality of the slave traders and his audience....
He describes the ways in which he was considered fortunate amongst other slaves. Equiano confessed that all of his masters were “worthy and humane”, they treated him right and even gave him the gift of literacy and religion (709). He compares his experience to the experience of other less fortunate individuals, and finds that treating slaves in a kinder manner actually benefits the slave owners (Equiano 709). Equiano states that the slaves under more solicitous masters “were uncommonly cheerful and healthy, and did more work” (709). Furthermore, he mentions how many malevolent slave owners would have to replace their slaves very often in order to make up for the amount of slaves that would die due to the harsh and unhealthy conditions that the slaves were put in (709). Equiano does all of this in order to try and reason with his audience in a more efficient way. Equiano realized that trying to convince his audience that slavery was completely wrong would not work due to the very strong views on it in his time. Instead he tries to convince his audience to change the manner in which they treat their slaves in order to benefit themselves, which consequently would benefit the slaves and contribute to their
This would lead him to a fantasy about what life would have been life back in Africa based on freedom. Equiano longed for freedom and suffered a traumatic experience (being enslaved) at a young age which may lead him to romanticize a different life. He believed that he would find his paradise in Africa. This can lead to a more favorable and positive view of Africa. He paints Africa as a place free of harm making him an unreliable source. By juxtaposing his freedom in Africa with his captivity in the colonies; he creates a biased image of his respective homeland. His reliability is questioned because he has no previous knowledge about life in Africa and only knows how it is described to him. His romanticized version of Africa gives a dynamic in his writing that negative towards the
Mary Prince and Olaudah Equiano’s lives were very different because of the work they did. The work they were forced to do affected their physical and mental health, as well as their general quality of life. Many slaves in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries worked on huge plantations in the Americas, but there were also household slaves, and slaves who worked on ships as sailors. The conditions a slave faced were largely dependent on what kind of work they were doing. Olaudah Equiano spent most of his enslaved life as a sailor and was relatively lucky with the conditions he faced. While he had many terrible experiences, and often endured horrible conditions, because he was a sailor he was treated better than most slaves. Olaudah even acknowledges
For example, when Equiano asserts “As if it were no crime in the whites to rob an innocent African girl of her virtue; but most heinous in a black man only to gratify a passion of nature, where the temptation was offered by one of a different color, though the most abandoned woman of her species (754),” he wishes to show the hypocrisy in the treatment of black men in comparison to white men. Invoking an emotional connection is an important element in literature, but especially during the Enlightenment. Illustrating that both blacks and whites share the common bond of humanity, helps makes Equiano’s narrative easier to digest. While some may criticize Equiano’s narrative for its accessibility, it fits with the theme of the
Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, and Olaudah Equiano all have extremely interesting slave narratives. During their lives, they faced plenty of racist discrimination and troubling moments. They were all forced into slavery at an awfully young age and they all had to fight for their freedom. In 1797, Truth was born into slavery in New York with the name of Isabella Van Wagener. She was a slave for most of her life and eventually got emancipated. Truth was an immense women’s suffrage activist. She went on to preach about her religious life, become apart of the abolitionist movement, and give public speeches. Truth wrote a well-known personal experience called An Account of an Experience with Discrimination, and she gave a few famous speech called Ain’t I a Woman? and Speech at New York City Convention. In 1818, Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born into slavery in Tuckahoe, Maryland. When he was older, he made an escape plan by disguising himself as a sailor and going on a train to New York. When he became a free man, he changed his name to Frederick Douglass and married Anna Murray. He went on to give many speeches and he became apart of the Anti-Slavery Society. Douglass wrote his story From My Bondage and My Freedom and became a publisher for a newspaper. In 1745, Olaudah Equiano was born in Essaka, Nigeria. Equiano and his sister were both kidnapped and put on the middle passage from Africa to Barbados and then finally to Virginia. He eventually saved enough money to buy his freedom and got married to Susanna Cullen. Equiano wrote his story down and named it From the Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano. He spent the rest of his life promoting the abolition movement. Throughout the personal slave narra...
After reading the slavery accounts of Olaudah Equiano 's "The Life of Olaudah Equiano" and Harriet Jacobs ' "Incidents In the Life of a Slave Girl", you gain knowledge of what slaves endured during their times of slavery. To build their audience aware of what life of a slave was like, both authors gives their interpretation from two different perspectives and by two different eras of slavery.
Olaudah Equiano in his Interesting Narrative is taken from his African home and thrown into a Western world completely foreign to him. Equiano is a slave for a total of ten years and endeavors to take on certain traits and customs of Western thinking. He takes great pains to improve himself, learn religion, and adopt Western mercantilism. However, Equiano holds on to a great deal of his African heritage. Throughout the narrative, the author keeps his African innocence and purity of intent; two qualities he finds sorely lacking in the Europeans. This compromise leaves him in a volatile middle ground between his adapted West and his native Africa. Olaudah Equiano takes on Western ideals while keeping several of his African values; this makes him a man associated with two cultures but a member of neither.
In comparison to other slaves that are discussed over time, Olaudah Equiano truly does lead an ‘interesting’ life. While his time as a slave was very poor, there are certainly other slaves that he mentions that received far more damaging treatment than he did. In turn, this inspires him to fight for the abolishment of slavery. By pointing out both negative and positive events that occurred, the treatment he received from all of his masters, the impact that religion had on his life and how abolishing slavery could benefit the future of everyone as a whole, Equiano develops a compelling argument that does help aid the battle against slavery. For Olaudah Equiano’s life journey, he expressed an array of cruelties that came with living the life of an African slave; which demonstrates all of the suffering that he endured, then proving how much it can change one’s point of view in life.
Olaudah Equiano was not an American born slave. He was born and raised well into his childhood in Africa with his family. His slave narrative, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustav Vassa, the African, published in New York in 1791 however, had a lasting impact on America as it described the inhumane treatment of Africans being sold into slavery (Baym 1: 687). Equiano’s initial concept of freedom stemmed from his childhood of which he speaks very fondly, describing his homeland as a “nation of dancers, musicians and poets,” a...
The Olaundah Equiano narrative is a view of servitude from a former captive himself. He begins his story in Africa from the land of Esska, his native homeland. He describes his tribe and all the many traditions they practiced as a way of living. Equiano was not originally born into servitude but a free male, son of a chief. Equiano’s life in Africa was common among the many members of his tribe. He was strongly attached to his mother and clenched to her as much as possible. His father obtained many slaves himself, but treated them like an equal part of the family. Equiano lived a common life in African society, until one day his destiny took an unexpected turn for the worst and life would never be the same.
"The Life of Olaudah Equiano” is a captivating story in which Equiano, the author, reflects on his life from becoming a slave to a freeman during the 19th century. Through his experiences and writing, Equiano paints a vivid picture of the atrocities and cruelties of European slavery. Ultimately through his narrative, Equiano intends to persuade his audience, the British government, to abolish the Atlantic slave trade as well as alert them of the harsh treatment of slaves. He successfully accomplishes his goal by subtly making arguments through the use of character, action, and setting.