Comparing Rowlandson And Equiano And The Perils Of Slavery

1529 Words4 Pages

It was once thought that slavery was just a normal civilized part of life, whether you owned a slave or were one, that’s just how it was. In the eighteenth and nineteenth century, slavery was a well know topic, and slave narratives such as the ones by Rowlandson and Equiano were becoming quite popular. Slave narratives such as these assisted in revealing the horrors of slavery. Both these slave narratives have similar traits that helped people around the world better understand the perils of slavery. Both the Rowlandson and Equiano slave narratives utilize the perils of slavery, and one might say they are “one in the same.” Both Rowlandson and Equiano were abruptly taken from their home, and forced to live somewhere they could not have …show more content…

Another peril that Rowlandson and Equiano both have to endure is the destitution that they both yearn for freedom, yet they fear the consequences of escaping. During Rowlandson’s narrative, she truly desires to escape, but fears she will not survive if she escapes from the captivity of the Indians (Rowlandson 130). As soon as Rowlandson realizes that the Indians are planning to keep her alive and not kill her, her first thought is that she has to escape from these barbaric human beings. However; Rowlandson states that although she wishes to escape there is nothing decent that will come out of it. She realizes that if she successfully escapes, there is a pronounced chance that she will not survive due to the harsh natural elements of the time however, if she attempts to escape and fails, she recognizes she will surely be slain on the spot. So, no matter how severely she wants to escape, there is no safe outcome of her doing so. In a similar manner, Equiano wishes to become free, and will do anything in his power to achieve his freedom, but corresponding with the Rowlandson piece, his freedom comes with a price. As soon as Equiano’s feet hit the deck of the ship he is already wishing to escape. He Says “…could I have got over the nettings, I would have jumped over the side…” (Equiano 266). This statement clearly …show more content…

In the Rowlandson slave narrative; before she is captured, she has a joyful life along with her loving husband and many children. Rowlandson`s life before captivity is everything a woman could long for. As soon as she is captured, however; she is forced to confront her worst nightmare, the evil livelihood of the Indians. During Rowlandson’s narrative she recalls rather a horrific event where the Indians killed and burned a woman and her child because she was continuously requesting to go home, and finally attempted to leave not wanting to spend a second more in the midst of the Indians. “…when they had done that, they made a fire and put them both into it…” (Rowlandson 131). Once Rowlandson witnesses this along with the horrific actions the Indians preformed on her village, Rowlandson officially has a complete understanding of how barbaric the Indians actually are. Rowlandson is personally brought from a place of protected innocence (her home) and force into direct confrontation with the barbaric Indians by being forced to be their slave. While a slave, Rowlandson is forced to carry her mistresses things no matter that the weight was too much. However, Rowlandson is not the only person forced to confront certain evils of slavery, Equiano also has similar evils

Show More
Related

  • Summary On Myne Owne Ground

    1299 Words  | 3 Pages

    “Slavery is an American embarrassment” (Breen/Innes 3). The history of slavery can be very complex. While most people believe that slaves did not have the chance to advance, Breen and Innes prove that theory wrong. At least slaves had the opportunity to purchase their freedom on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Breen and Innes also point out that the relationships between blacks and whites are also not how we originally thought they were. They were not one sided relationships; they could be considered co-dependent relationships.

    Read More

  • Indentured Servitude and Slavery in the New World

    1072 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast Frederick Douglass And David Walker

    1402 Words  | 3 Pages

    Despite each individual having different circumstances in which they experienced regarding the institution of slavery, both were inspired to take part in the abolitionist movement due to the injustices they witnessed. The result is two very compelling and diverse works that attack the institution of slavery and argue against the reasons the pro-slavery individuals use to justify the slavery

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast Mary Prince And Olaudah Equiano

    1365 Words  | 3 Pages

    Slavery in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries consisted of brutal and completely unjust treatment of African-Americans. Africans were pulled from their families and forced to work for cruel masters under horrendous conditions, oceans away from their homes. While it cannot be denied that slavery everywhere was horrible, the conditions varied greatly and some slaves lived a much more tolerable life than others. Examples of these life styles are vividly depicted in the personal narratives of Olaudah Equiano and Mary Prince. The diversity of slave treatment and conditions was dependent on many different factors that affected a slave’s future. Mary Prince and Olaudah Equiano both faced similar challenges, but their conditions and life styles

    Read More

  • What Are The Rhetorical Techniques Used By Olaudah Equiano

    1069 Words  | 3 Pages

    Abolitionists in 18th century Britain had to combat many incorrect stereotypes and inappropriate justifications for the enslavement of Africans. To create an effective argument against slavery, writers had to counter these preconceptions in subtle and irrefutable ways. For instance, Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative uses particular language, punctuation, and repetition to explicate his experience, garnering sympathy and disgust for African slaves’ plight, while remaining comprehensible and inoffensive to a white audience. Thus, his subtle rhetorical techniques relate Equiano and Africans to his audience while critiquing their treatment of slavery, accomplishing the seemingly impossible task of proving Africans should not be enslaved.

    Read More

  • Harriet Jacobs And Fredrick Douglass: A Narrative Analysis

    1507 Words  | 4 Pages

    During the Antebellum Era in the United States, it was constitutionally protected to own slaves as property. Slavery also made up a large sum of the American economy, especially in the Southern states. However, the act of slavery in America was much more than economic stimulation and constitutional interpretations. Slavery was cognitively oppressive and immortal as it dehumanized the white population and enslaved people. In the slave narratives of Harriet Jacobs and Fredrick Douglass, both authors write how their lived experiences embodies the dehumanization of African Americans in both physical and mental acts of violence. In addition, their narratives render examples of how mistresses and masters did not acknowledge the problems of slavery

    Read More

  • Slaves Narratives: Frederick Douglass, Olaudah Equiano

    1468 Words  | 3 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl And Frederick Douglass

    1202 Words  | 3 Pages

    The issue of Slavery in the South was an unresolved issue in the United States during the seventeenth and eighteenth century. During these years, the south kept having slavery, even though most states had slavery abolished. Due to the fact that slaves were treated as inferior, they did not have the same rights and their chances of becoming an educated person were almost impossible. However, some information about slavery, from the slaves’ point of view, has been saved. In this essay, we are comparing two different books that show us what being a slave actually was. This will be seen with the help of two different characters: Linda Brent in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Frederick Douglass in The Narrative of the life of Frederick

    Read More

  • What did freedom mean to harriet jacobs

    1325 Words  | 3 Pages

    To understand the desperation of wanting to obtain freedom at any cost, it is necessary to take a look into what the conditions and lives were like of slaves. It is no secret that African-American slaves received cruel and inhumane treatment. Although she wrote of the horrific afflictions experienced by slaves, Linda Brent said, “No pen can give adequate description of the all-pervading corruption produced by slavery." The life of a slave was never a satisfactory one, but it all depended on the plantation that one lived on and the mast...

    Read More

  • Faith in Captivity: The Resilience of Mary Rowlandson

    829 Words  | 2 Pages

    Rowlandson was a pure puritan and like any puritan writer, she chose to write about her religious beliefs, hardships, and God. During her captivity, which she writes about, her faith never breaks. In February of 1675, Rowlandson’s small town was invaded by Native Americans who captured twenty-four people and destroyed the town. She was separated from

    Read More

  • Slave Narratives as Abolitionist Arguments

    1809 Words  | 4 Pages

    From the period of Antebellum America up into the present time, many documents and pieces of work have been published regarding the abolition of slavery and slavery in general. Regarding the abolition of slavery, slave narratives were one of the ways to get readers first hand look at accounts of slavery and in turn were a big part of abolitionist movements. In class we have read three of the great slave narratives and there are abolitionist themes that can be traces through all three of them. These themes argued against slavery and were used to persuade their readers to support the abolition of slavery. Although there were many similar themes through out the narratives I will be focusing on just two of the most effective ways that argue for the abolition of slavery: slavery seen as a slow poison, and emotion through extreme cruelty and suffering.

    Read More

  • Slavery’s Dehumanizing Effects on American Slaves and Slaveholders

    1652 Words  | 4 Pages

    Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, brings to light many of the social injustices that colored men, women, and children all were forced to endure throughout the nineteenth century under Southern slavery laws. Douglass's life-story is presented in a way that creates a compelling argument against the justification of slavery. His argument is reinforced though a variety of anecdotes, many of which detailed strikingly bloody, horrific scenes and inhumane cruelty on the part of the slaveholders. Yet, while Douglas’s narrative describes in vivid detail his experiences of life as a slave, what Douglass intends for his readers to grasp after reading his narrative is something much more profound. Aside from all the physical burdens of slavery that he faced on a daily basis, it was the psychological effects that caused him the greatest amount of detriment during his twenty-year enslavement. In the same regard, Douglass is able to profess that it was not only the slaves who incurred the damaging effects of slavery, but also the slaveholders. Slavery, in essence, is a destructive force that collectively corrupts the minds of slaveholders and weakens slaves’ intellects.

    Read More

  • Frederick Douglass And Frederick Douglass Analysis

    1247 Words  | 3 Pages

    Interestingly although she feared and reviled the Indians she states that not one of them offered the least abuse of unchastity to her. Her captors never sexually molested or violated her. Rowlandson learned to adapt and strove to make it thought her captivity alive. She learned how to gather food for herself. Tolerate the ways of the Indians, and make clothes for the tribe. She even decided to stay with the Indians when given the chance to escape. “Rowlandson refused them choosing to stay put and let God choose when she was fully redeemed and ready to be released”

    Read More

  • Mary Rowlandson Captivity

    2054 Words  | 5 Pages

    Throughout the narrative Rowlandson goes from being a captor of the Native Americans to having a high social standing with them. In the beginning of the exert she describes the way in which the natives treat her and the way in which her daughter is handled. Rowlandson states, “Then they set me upon a horse with my wounded child in lap, and there being no furniture upon the horse’s back, as we were going down a steep hill we, both fell over the horse’s head, at which they, like inhumane creatures laughed and rejoiced to see it…” (260). This passage shows that the Native Americans think less of Rowlandson because to them she is nothing more than a joke because she and her daughter fell off the horse. The story changes as Rowlandson builds rapport with the Native Americans. Rowlandson describes her interaction with the Quinnpin: “He asked me, when I washed me? I told I’m not this month. Then he fetched me some water himself, and bid me wash, and gave me the glass to see how I looked; and bid his sqaw give me something to eat” (278). In this passage she writes how the Indians are being hospitable to her, in order to show the agency, she has gained with her captors. This experience which is not a usual exchange between the Native Americans and the English shows the authority that Rowlandson commands in this community due to her taking control of her

    Read More

  • Essay Comparing Equiano And Jacobs

    1485 Words  | 3 Pages

    American literature consists of many different kinds of narratives. During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a new type of narrative emerged: the slave narrative. Though they both share similar experiences, Equiano and Jacobs feel very differently about their circumstances and society. Equiano holds a more charitable view of his masters, but Jacobs examines her owners' good traits and bad qualities. Both writers were valuable to their masters, but they proclaimed their value in different ways. The differences in these two narratives can be attributed to the different personalities of Jacobs and Equiano.

    Read More

More about Comparing Rowlandson And Equiano And The Perils Of Slavery

Open Document