Olaudah Equiano Rhetorical Analysis

The fight for racial equality is one of the most prominent issues Americans have faced throughout history and even today; as the idea that enslaving individuals is unethical emerged, many great and innovative authors began writing about the issues that enslaved people had to face. Olaudah Equiano was no exception. In his work The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, he attempts to persuade his readers that the American way of slavery is brutal, inhumane, and unscrupulous. Equiano manages to do this by minimizing the apparent differences between himself and his primarily white audience, mentioning the cruelties that he and many other slaves had to face, and the advantages of treating your slaves correctly.
Throughout his autobiography,

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