Classic Slave Narrative of Olaudah Equiano Term Paper

Classic Slave Narrative of Olaudah Equiano

The narrative of the former slave Olaudah Equiano may seem unfamiliar in its construction and ideology to many readers familiar with only popular slave narratives, such as the narrative of Frederick Douglass. Unlike the narratives of slaves who came of age only within the institution of bondage, Equiano was born free, in the land of Africa. Equiano himself was born as an upper-class member of an African royal family, and knew what it was like to be of a privileged caste, and even to regard himself as superior to other Africans and to whites with which his tribe came into contact with.

However, all of this changed once Equiano was sold into slavery. Equiano was subject to the same privations upon the Middle Passage as those individual Africans who came from less privileged circumstances. In fact, Equiano endured some of the most rigorous conditions of slavery of the time, that of the West Indies. Interestingly enough, the institution of slavery was present within Equiano's culture and offered him a point of comparison with this initial encounter of personal enslavement.He does not outright defame the practice of his own tribe's use of slaves at first, but rather defensively states: "Those prisoners which were not sold or redeemed we kept as slaves: but how different was their condition from that of the slaves in the West Indies! With us they do no more work than other members of the community, even their master; their food, clothing and lodging were nearly the same as theirs, (except that they were not permitted to eat with those who were freeborn), and there was scarce any other difference between them than a superior degree of importance which the head of a family possesses in our state, and that authority which, as such, he exercises over every part of his household. Some of these slaves have even slaves under them as their own property and for their own use."

It is for this reason perhaps that Equiano first critiques the institution of white-inflicted slavery, not as a….....