The Life Of Olaudah Equiano Rhetorical Analysis

In Equiano 's personal slave narrative, The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Equiano uses distinguishing first person pronouns, thought provoking rhetorical questions, and eye-opening, harsh diction to flip the idea that the African people act backwards and barbaric. Equiano does so by demonstrating his personal exceptionalism through his literacy to show that truly the white people remain backwards and barbaric because of their hypocrisy. The contradiction of the perceptions of white and African people that Equiano demonstrates in his slave narrative shows that the savagery of African people is a misconception. The misconception of the perceptions of the African people makes the reader fully grasp the need to abolish

In the eighteenth century, the slave narrative started to emerge. During this literary period, major emphasis was placed on the values of the Enlightenment; one of these values in particular being the power of the individual. Equiano used the first person pronouns to give himself more power and more authority that way his chronicle was taken seriously. Also during this literary period, another valued Enlightenment principle is that of first person experience. By using the first person pronouns, Equiano demonstrates the events in his narrative directly through first person experience. The events that Equiano discusses relates as well back to the literary period of the book. The anecdote talks about exploration and the discovery of the new areas that Equiano sails to, which displays the idea of the exploration novel of the time

Equiano characterizes white people in this way through his exceptionalism and the knowledge he obtains, which allows him to recognize the true, hypocritical nature of the white person. Since Equiano is able to reach this noteworthy distinction, he shows that other African people could also reach his potential if allowed, displaying to the audience a new perception of African people. By overturning the common perception of white people at the time, Equiano forces the reader to question the conventions of enslavement so that the public understands the need to abolish captivity and other