The Life of Olaudah Equiano

I want to start by talking about the word “Slave” because I do not particularly like using it. Throughout all my schooling, every teacher used the word slave and every time I heard it, I hoped they would use a different word, or bring up how it isn’t a good word to use. “A debate has been percolating for the last quarter-century or so — mostly in academia — about whether “slave” is a needlessly dehumanizing word to describe a person who was in bondage.” (Chicago Tribune). I completely agree with the quote above, the term slave is completely dehumanizing and the people who have been enslaved in the first place have been dehumanized enough already. So, why are teachers still using the term “slave” rather than “enslaved people”? Shouldn’t they be teaching about the dehumanization of a whole group of people rather than dehumanizing more? For the sake of this paper I used the word slave because it shows that Equiano was not treated as a person but as a slave, a dehumanized person.

Olaudah Equiano was taken from his own home, his own country to become a slave and face the harsh treatments pushed upon him. With this came fear, the fear of the unknown. Equiano was put on a ship, sent to a place he had never been before that surprised him more than once, and the fear of the future to come. Fear is enforced into slaves; it is the best way for the colonizers to control them). Being dragged from his home, Equiano experiences many new things, like seeing snow for the first time, and new technology in an industrialized country, even a clock amazes him. Equiano talks about the fear he felt through all this experience, and how fear could be minimized if he and everyone else was treated with respect.

“At the sight of this land of bondage, a fresh horror ran through all my frame, and chilled me to the heart. My former slavery now rose in dreadful review to my mind and displayed nothing but misery, stripes, and chains; and, in the first paroxysm of my grief, I called upon God’s thunder, and his avenging power, to direct the stroke of death to me, rather than permit me to become a slave, and be sold from lord to lord.”

We later see Equiano as a free man, he is offered his own slaves, which he declines, but he becomes a missionary in Africa. A missionary is someone sent on a religious mission, to spread the religion, which is usually Christianity. As a free man, Equiano takes on the sea again. I think there are many interpretations there like how he was recreating/facing the trauma he first experienced when being put on the boat. Or there is my perspective, which is that the sea and the ocean are one of the most freeing things on this planet. The water goes on for miles and miles, it is such a big expanse of open water. He had just been freed from enslavement and what better to do than to go to one of the most freeing things?

What I talk about on the one-pager is the summary, some new things he experienced that he felt the need to right about. I also talk about his freedom and his need to go back to sea and the fear that was placed on his shoulders the minute he was captured and put on that boat.

His writing makes this seems personable, like we are experiencing it with him, the emotion he uses when he is writing about his fear and his faith really stands out in the reading to me. He used his voice to tell people what his experience was like, how he felt through the whole thing, and the events that took place. He chose to write his story in English because that was the audience he was trying to attract. Why would he write it in his native language when his people had gone through what he had, or worse. He wanted a targeted audience to attract, he wanted the colonizers to know what it felt like to be colonized.

I included three quotes that stuck out to me from the beginning, though I used them in my blog posts I wanted to use them again. The first quote is about the snow, his unusual experience that showed his confusion.

“One morning, when I got upon deck, I saw it covered all over with snow that fell over night: as I had never seen anything of the kind before, I thought it was salt…”

The second quote I used is about fear, and how fear could be turned into happiness and peace if everyone is treated as people and not like animals chained up and doing the white mans dirty work.

“But by changing your conduct and treating your slaves as men, every cause of fear would be banished. They would be faithful, honest, intelligent and vigorous; and peace, prosperity and happiness, would attend you.”

The last quote I included is about the absolute fear of being a slave and how Equiano prayed to his God that he would kill him with a strike of thunder rather than let him be controlled and enslaved.

      Works cited

Equiano, Olaudah. “THE LIFE.” The Project Gutenberg EBook of “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, The African”, by OLAUDAH EQUIANO., 2005, www.gutenberg.org/files/15399/15399-h/15399-h.htm.

Zorn, Eric. “Column: Language Matters: The Shift from ‘Slave’ to ‘Enslaved Person’ May Be Difficult, but It’s Important.” Chicagotribune.com, Chicago Tribune, 7 Sept. 2019, www.chicagotribune.com/columns/eric-zorn/ct-column-slave-enslaved-language-people-first-debate-zorn-20190906-audknctayrarfijimpz6uk7hvy-story.html.