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Olaudah Equiano’s autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa the African, Written by Himself(1789), represents an important artifact and notable example of the slave-narrative genre, which was not yet a recognized literary form at the time of Equiano’s writing. The autobiography also serves as an early record of the black African diaspora during slavery. Equiano’s story is filled with personal struggle and triumph. He was kidnapped, sold into slavery, and shipped to America, but eventually earned his freedom, traveled the world, and became an abolitionist in England.
Works in Biographical and Historical Context
Taken for a Slave
Equiano was born in the interior of Nigeria, in or about 1745. At the age of eleven, he was kidnapped with his sister by a band of African raiders. Equiano was sold to British slave traders bound for America. In his autobiography, he describes life in his tribe prior to his enslavement, as well as his experience on the slave ship heading to the New World:
—The closeness of the space, and the heat of the climate added to the number in the ship which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocating us. This produced copious perspiration, so that the air soon became unfit for respiration, from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died, thus falling victims to the improvident avarice . . . of their purchasers.
Equiano also described the brutal treatment of the slaves:
——a load of heavy iron hooks hung about their necks. Indeed, on the most trifling occasions, they were loaded with chains; and often instruments of torture were added. . . . I have seen a Negro beaten till some of his bones were broken, for only letting a pot boil over.
New Name, New Place, New Face
After the able conditions of the voyage, Equiano was taken to Virginia. He became the property of ”one Mr. Camp bell,” who assigned him to field work for only ”weeding grass, and gathering stones in a plantation.” This stint of manual labor did not last long, however. After just a few weeks, Campbell sold Equiano to Michael Henry Pascal, a former lieutenant in the Royal Navy and the commander of a merchant ship. Pascal became fond of Equiano and bought him as ”a present to some friends in England.” Pascal also renamed Equiano Gustavus Vassa, after the sixteenth-century Swedish king. When Equiano resisted the name, he was physically punished.
While working for Pascal on his ship, Equiano became friends with Richard (Dick) Baker, a teenaged American sailor who helped Equiano learn about Western culture. He also helped Equiano become fluent in English. This relationship paved the way for Equiano’s writing. In his narrative, Equiano writes,
—–I had often seen my master and Dick employed in reading, and I had a great curiosity to talk to the books as I thought they did, and so to learn how all things had a beginning: for that purpose I have often taken up a book and have talked to it and then put my ears to it, when in hopes it would answer me; and I have been very much concerned when I found it remained silent.
Once in England, Equiano was treated well compared with other slaves in his position. When Pascal took Equiano to Falmouth, Equiano served as a member of the family. Not long after, Pascal sent him to live in another kind, even respectful, household. Living in white households caused Equiano to become confused about his identity. He was subservient to the others in his house, yet also lived among them. He recalls trying to change his appearance by scrubbing his face until his cheeks turned rosy like the white children with whom he lived.
Education at School and at Sea
Equiano was eventually given to Pascal’s cousins, the Guerin sisters, who sent him to school for a formal education. Also concerned for his spiritual development, the sisters also had him baptized. Pascal soon brought Equiano back to sea again, to help him serve in the Seven Years’ War, a conflict that officially began between France and England in 1756.
This conflict erupted over the issue of control of various colonies and ”commodities,” including African slaves. Equiano wrote about his role in the war to show his readers that by participating in it, he reclaimed the very humanity that had been taken from him when he was kidnapped and sold into slavery and also gained a new level of respect and honor. Equiano wrote about the war with the precise tone of a correspondent. He offered crisp, vivid details of the sea battles between the British and the French. For example, Equiano keenly portrayed his own active role in one such engagement: ”My station during the engagement was on the middle deck, where I was quartered with another boy, to bring powder to the aftermost gun . . . Happily I escaped unhurt, though the shots and splinters flew thick about me during the whole fight.”
Opportunity in Enslavement
After the war, Pascal sold Equiano to a captain, who in turn sold the young man to Robert King, a Philadelphia merchant who operated in the West Indies. Seeing potential in Equiano, King gave him a respectable position as shipping and receiving clerk, as well as his personal barber, currier of his horses, and even the manager of his ships. Equiano also helped Thomas Farmer, a captain who shipped cargo for King throughout the West Indies and the southern American colonies. In this position, Equiano had considerable responsibility and traveled for four years, and beheld sights many other slaves could not. However, he never stopped yearning for his freedom. Finally, in 1765 King struck a deal with Equiano—he would allow him to buy his freedom for forty pounds, the price King had paid for him. Equiano saved money from side trading that King allowed him to do, and, when he was in his early twenties, accumulated enough to purchase his freedom.
As a free man, Equiano traveled throughout the West Indies and America and eventually returned to England. There, he decided to improve himself through education. He indulged both practical and eclectic interests and learned arithmetic, hairdressing, and how to play the French horn. More than anything, Equiano wanted to increase his income and achieve the status of a ”cultured gentleman.” To this end, he got a job working for Dr. Charles Irving, a well-known scientist who experimented with the purification of salt water. Equiano also traveled through Europe and the Mediterranean, where he experienced grand opera, studied architecture, and savored gourmet food and wine. In 1773 Equiano joined Dr. Irving on an expedition to the Arctic to search for a passage to India. Equiano eventually returned to America where he became involved in the study of different religions and in the abolition movement.
Later Years in London
In later years, Equiano went back to London and was appointed commissary for Stores for the Black Poor, an emigrationist group whose goal was to return blacks to Africa. Equiano publicly challenged the mismanagement of funds and supplies he had witnessed during his own emigration experience and worked to expose the inhumane treatment of slaves. In 1788, Equiano even petitioned the Queen of England on behalf of his enslaved fellow Africans. Equiano married Susanna Cullen in April 1792 and had two daughters, Ann Maria and Johanna. He died just five years later, on March 31, 1797.
Works in Literary Context
Equiano is justly considered a pioneer in the slave-narrative genre. His writing is one of the earliest written accounts of the African-American experience. Scholars appreciate Equiano’s autobiography for introducing the themes of the quest, redemption, alienation, and exile that resonate through later African-American writings.
Pioneer of the Slave Narrative
The slave narrative emerged in the early seventeenth century and was founded on personal accounts written in a variety of forms by enslaved Africans. Despite its early roots, the genre did not become popular until the mid-nineteenth century with Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845) and Booker T. Washington’s Up From Slavery; An Autobiography (1901). But, Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, notes critic Paul Edwards, is ”the most remark able of the 18th century.” Equiano once said he wanted to be ”an instrument of [his] suffering countrymen.” Wilfred D. Samuels suggests that ”Equiano’s narrative must, to a great degree, be perceived as the mold from which much early black fiction was first cast, particularly since it is apparently one of the first records to shape the experiences of the black African diaspora during slavery.” At a time when slavery was not often discussed publicly, Equiano championed the issue through his own story and by criticizing proslavery rhetoric.
Religion in The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano
Critics say one reason that Equiano’s narrative became popular was its spiritual references. In a way, they argue, the heart of his story grows from his religious freedom more than from his physical freedom. Even in his portrait, printed in the book, he holds a Bible showing Acts 4:12, which states: ”For there is no other name under heaven by which we must be saved.” For Equiano’s readership, this reference showed Equiano looking only to Jesus for salvation. Additionally, when he writes of his early childhood in Nigeria, Equiano uses many religious and cultural analogies to show commonality between his Ibo people and the Jews, a nation with their own historical trials and persecution, and truly believed ”that the one people had sprung from the other.” Not only was religion featured in Equiano’s book, but it and other narratives like it helped pair religion and the abolitionist movement. Espousing the message that all souls are equal, Equiano’s helped strengthen opposition to slavery and earned the attention and support of evangelists like John Wesley, the abolitionist founder of Methodism. Sermons took on a new antislavery message, and by the 1780s, Baptist and Methodist groups were encouraging their followers to free their slaves as proof of their faith in God.
Works in Critical Context
The Interesting Narrative of the Life With its vivid portrayal of the African-American experience, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano changed the face of autobiographical writing at a time when African Americans were little more than commodity. Equiano’s narrative made details of enslavement public and, in its authenticity, forced readers to realize the injustice, violence, and reality of slavery.
Equiano’s memoir was received positively response by readers and was reviewed in leading journals. Interestingly, many did not believe Equiano, or any black man, could write a story that well. The Monthly Review critic wrote: ”We entertain no doubt of the general authentic ity of this very intelligent African’s interesting story; though it is not improbable that some English writer has assisted him in the compilement, or, at least, the correction of his book: for it is sufficiently well written.”
- African American Autobiography: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. William L. Andrews. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1993.
- Baker, Houston. The Journey Back. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.
- Blassingame, John. The Slave Community. New York: Oxford University Press, 1972.
- Bontemps, Arna, ed. Great Slave Narratives. Boston: Beacon Press, 1969.
- Brawley, Benjamin. Early Negro American Writers. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1953.
- Butterfield, Stephen. Black Autobiography in America. Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 1974.
- Curtin, Philip. Africa Remembered. Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967.
- Samuels, Wilfred D. ”Olaudah Equiano.” in Harris, Trudier, ed. Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 50: Afro-American Writers Before the Harlem Renaissance. Detroit: Gale, 1986.
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