Life of Olaudah Equiano

Introduction Slaves faced the terror of their life every day. It was through this threat of violence that was thought to be the major means of controlling the slave populations of the plantations. This physical cruelty was found to be but a minor controlling method as the owners were unwilling to risk damaging their property or slowing their means of production by this damage to property. It took little time for the slaveholders to realize a better means of control was needed. The better and more effective means of control that also allowed for the continuance of production levels of the plantation was found to be the slaves very own family. The slave trade, yet horrific in it's inhumanity, became an significant facet of the world's finances throughout the eighteenth century. During a time when thousands of Africans were being traded for currency, Olaudah Equiano became one of countless children kidnapped and traded on the black market as a slave. Slavery lived centuries before the birth of Equiano (1745), but strengthened drastically due to an expanding demand for work in the developing western hemisphere, especially in the Caribbean and Carolinas. Through illogical justification, slave swapping became a powerful facet of commerce, despite of its premeditated mistreatment of human beings by other human beings. Olaudah Equiano was adept to overwhelm this strong adversity and actually accumulate riches by making the best of certain situations he faced all through his experiences. In "The Interesting Life of Olaudah Equiano," Vassa puts his life down in written word. What makes this work of literature so different from any other autobiography is the fact that it is laced with meaning and symbolism. Equiano puts forth his life in a calculated form with a means to gain support for the abolitionist movement.

Discussion

The narrative of Olaudah Equiano is really a magnificent one. Not only does the reader get to see the world through Equiano's own personal experiences, we get to read a foremost autobiography that blended the form of a slave narrative with that of a religious alteration autobiography. Religion may be examined as at the heart of the matter in Equiano's long, amazing journey. Through Equiano's own experiences, the book book reader uncovers just how massive a role belief played in the part of his Narrative and in that of his own life. More specifically, we discover of how his devout alteration meant a kind of flexibility as significant as his own independence from slavery. Olaudah Equiano has long been renowned as an inspiration, a creative genius, and as a challenging abolitionist. However, in recent years, he has furthermore been renowned by some somewhat more derogatory periods, such as liar and fraud. In 1999, certain outcome by Vincent Carretta propose that Equiano may not have been born in Africa, as he claims to in his autobiography The intriguing Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself, but really may have been born in South ...