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Textual analysis of slavery
Critical analysis of incidents in the life of a slave girl
Critical analysis of incidents in the life of a slave girl
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Olaudah Equiano's "The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano" is one of the most influential slave narratives to present day society. As one of the first widely read accounts of the slave trade, Equiano's style established an effective form of slave narrative that influenced countless authors, including Frederick Douglass. The language sets up credibility and maintains a tone of honesty rather than sentimentality. Through his use of diction, verb tense, and the consciousness of his target audience, Equiano creates a realistic description of slave life that is both powerful and informative.
Much of Equiano's word choice within the description of the treatment of female slaves creates a type of accountability towards the reader. The use of language such as "depredations", "atrocities", and "abominations.".. "Of the chastity of the female slaves" certainly correlates the horrors the females faced with the hypocrisy of the readers who do not take action to correct these unimaginable injustices. When Equiano describes being "unable to help them" it is intended first to make the reader realize the wrongness of the treatment of these women, but also to see that although Equiano is helpless, they are not. This language is used to inform as well as mobilize a group of people who could help change the situation. "Depredations" points to both destruction and the devastating effects the sexual assaults have on these female slaves. The use of the word chastity ties in the religious factor of need to protect the sexuality of these "females not ten years old." Two other noteworthy points include the way Equiano points out the individuals committing these "cruelties of every kind" as clerks and other whites. The sp...
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...etail-by-detail recollections to the absence of sentimental language that often accompanies works where the author feels strongly about the subject matter. His use of diction simply states the horrors of the rapes and abuses the female slaves suffer though. Implying that these actions are still going on, the verb tense ensures that the reader knows there has been nothing substantial to change the situation and his awareness of his audience is perhaps the most important detail. Equiano was able to write a narrative that reveals the facts of the slave trade. Perhaps he described the wrongness of the slave trade when he said it is "to the disgrace not of Christians only, but of men."
Through his use of diction, verb tense, and the consciousness of his target audience, Equiano creates a realistic description of slave life that is both powerful and informative.
There are few things as brutal as the history of the institution of slavery. In his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African, the aforementioned Olaudah Equiano describes the experience of his entrance into slavery.
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
The book The Classic Slave Narratives is a collection of narratives that includes the historical enslavement experiences in the lives of the former slaves Harriet Jacobs, Frederick Douglass, and Olaudah Equiano. They all find ways to advocate for themselves to protect them from some of the horrors of slavery, such as sexual abuse, verbal abuse, imprisonment, beatings, torturing, killings and the nonexistence of civil rights as Americans or rights as human beings. Also, their keen wit and intelligence leads them to their freedom from slavery, and their fight for freedom and justice for all oppressed people.
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
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.
Olaudah Equiano (Gustavus Vassa) was kidnapped from his African village at the age of eleven, shipped through the arduous "Middle Passage" of the Atlantic Ocean, seasoned in the West Indies and sold to a Virginia planter. He was later bought by a British naval Officer, Captain Pascal, as a present for his cousins in London. After ten years of enslavement throughout the North American continent, where he assisted his merchant slave master and worked as a seaman, Equiano bought his freedom. At the age of forty four he wrote and published his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African. Written by Himself, which he registered at Stationer's Hall, London, in 1789. More than two centuries later, this work is recognized not only as one of the first works written in English by a former slave, but perhaps more important as the paradigm of the slave narrative, a new literary genre.
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
Equiano’s fortune landed him in the hands of a wealthy widow who purchased him from the traders who had kidnapped him. He lived the life as a companion to the widow and her son. Luck was on his side in this transaction, many slave owners frowned upon educating and assisting slaves. “Masters” typically feared an educated slave would take measures to make a change. He explains, though, how he held status above other slave under the widow’s ownership, “There were likewise slaves daily to attend us, while my young master and I,...
...hose moments of violence with this woman, being raped by men who have no say so with their own lives. The more your read you are forced to put yourself in this woman shoes, to imagine what she went through. As you read the article you are forced to ask questions, to reconstruct the past with Warren as she pieces together this slaves story. Even in the lyrics to the song he asks “Now stop and imagine that’s you. Now stop imagining unravels the truth and asks just who it is happening to”. (Veit, “The Travelers” Lecture) In both sources imagination is an imperative piece to reconstruct the past. There is no way that we can go back in time, resurrect the dead and ask them are the things true or false, we solely depend on our imagination to make this reconstruction, which is why our imagination is important to understand and construct life during the time of slavery.
"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.
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....
In 1745, Olaudah Equiano was born in a small village in Isseke,Nigeria. His father was one of the chiefs in the village. At age eleven Equiano and his sister were kidnapped by two men and a woman never to see his home or parents again. After being kidnapped he was hiked across part of Africa untill he arrived at the coast where he was loaded onto a slave ship. While crossing the Atlantic to Barbados onboard the slave ship he and his countrymen were subject to horrors you could hardly imagine. Equiano tells about the horrors and torture slaves face not only on the slave ship but also on plantations and many other aspects of a slave's life. Equiano experienced almost all parts of a slave's existence. He was a slave throughout Africa, England, and the New World. Equiano is bought and sold several times. Religion also played a huge role in Equiano's life and I think that it helped him get through some really hard times. He is bought by a British Naval officer and serves in the British Navy during the Seven Years' War. He is then sold to Robert King where he begins trading goods between islands and eventually makes enough money to buy his freedom. Equiano tells of the joy he feels when he becomes a free man. The rest of his life is devoted to helping slaves and to the cause of abolishing slavery.
The “Speeches,” written in 1762 and 1763, informs how the Pontiac rebellion occurred. Neolin, “a religious prophet who helped to inspire the rebellion” criticizes that the Indians have lost their culture (Foner, 2014). They have become dependent on the European’s culture, traditions, and even weapons. Instead of using their bows and arrows, they depended on European guns and knives. Though they may believe that they were free, the Indians were bounded by the European ways. The second passage about the life of a slave was written by Olaudah Equiano in 1789. This runaway slave from the West Indies was caught into slavery again, but his new slave owner was kind and not abusive. Robert King, Equiano’s slave owner, entrusted him with clerk duties and taught him new skills (The Life of Olaudah Equiano Chapter V Summary and Analysis, para 5-6). The passage emphasized on the procedure of auctioning slaves and the emotional struggles that the slaves have. He stresses on the emotional aspects when slaves are separated from their family and friends. Equiano does this because he wants the Christian slave owners to display their belief in religion and liberty. This is also a way to emphasize the cruelty of the Whites. This passage is about slave trade, and how slaves lose their friends and families to the
Religion, more specifically, Christianity can be seen throughout The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano. Religion plays a major role in Equiano’s remarkable journey; that of which can be seen through his personal experiences. Religion plays a significant role in his Narrative and his life overall as he undergoes a spiritual rebirth. This narrative shapes Equiano’s physical move from slavery to freedom and also his journey from sin to salvation.
Equiano way of slavery is differently than that of Jacobs. Equaino was taken from his homeland of Africa. He was apart of what is known as the Middle Passage which was considered a deadly voyage for many slaves that were apart of this voyage across the Atlantic. After his arrival, he experience the hard labor. Jacobs, who was born into slavery was already born in what was considered the "New America". Equiano way of telling his narratives was in more of a chronological way with vivid description of what he was being faced with everyday. Jacobs not only told what slavery was like for her, but also provide more emotion than that of Equiano. She gave stories of others like slave that was previously own by Dr. Flint and fathering of other slave 's children. Unlike Equiano, he was given his other name of Gustavus Vassa by his master, Jacobs wrote her narrative under the name of Linda Bendt and changed names of others in her narrative in order to protect the reputation of those . Although Equiano talks about what woman 's went through during slavery, it was Jacobs he gave more of an in-depth of it with dealing with lust from a master and only being known as the property of her master and her master only. Both authors expressed in their own way that once you fall into slavery, you lose sense of who you are and the morals you were brought up