narrative of the life of olaudah equiano

Although Equinao feels betrayed at first, his rationale changes and his current condition is a result of god’s punishment for his sins. This unashamedly transaction that Pascal engages in breaks the ease and adventurous tone of the biography, by showing that even after a seemingly strong connection/bond slaves were still seen as nothing more than property and as beings that were inferior to white people. Equiano is shocked by this unfaithfulness and claims that he is not property because he feels he had been treated well by his master over the last few years. “I have served him… and by the laws of the land no man has the right to sell me’ (81). However, at one layover in England, Pascal suddenly seizes Equinao and sells him to a captain of a Dutch ship. After many faithful years serving Pascal, Equinao regards him as a good master and to a certain extent a friend.

“They often used to teach me to read and took great pains to instruct me n the principles of religion” (72). Pascal and Equiano are always at seas, but during their layovers Pascal manages to baptize Equiano as well as send him to school to learn to read and write. “I ceased to feel those apprehensions and alarms which had taken such strong possession of me when I first came among the Europeans” (111). An Englishman named Michael Pascal buys Equiano and under Pascal’s service, Equiano grows very attached to him and European culture as a whole, both of which had worried him previously. He focuses on his individual travels and his own personal encounter with slavery, which takes away from the comprehensive outlook on slavery at the time. Instead of focusing on the misgivings of his treatment, Equiano uses his work to serve as an odyssey. This theme of giving dull descriptions of his “slave torment” and avoiding vivid description throughout the work is very apparent. This is something that seems odd because his first beating would signify his new life and really establish what the remainder of his existence was going to be like. There is no real emotion when he says it and he seems to dismiss the beating right after it occurs. “One of them held me down fast with my hands while the other flogged me severely” (Equiano 58). On the ship he receives his first beating, which he does not describe to the audience but rather just blatantly says it. Equinao goes on to describe the Middle Passage and the various things he encountered on the journey.

Narrative of the life of olaudah equiano