Professor Karen Gainey
English 311
2 November 2013
Grief, Anguish, and Pain Experienced by Olaudah Equiano
The Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano is a very descriptive narrative about Olaudah Equiano’s experiences of being of a slave. The narrative is very touching and heartfelt. I admire Olaudah Equiano for his strength, courage, and for being oppressed to so much pain. The kidnapping of Equiano and his sister, Equiano’s attempt to escape to freedom and the scene on the slave ship were the scenes that I found to be the most compelling.
I found the kidnapping of Equiano and his sister to be one of the most compelling pieces of Equiano’s narrative, because I am a mother of a two year old and I think that has to …show more content…
be one of my greatest fears. While reading about the kidnapping, I felt like I was experiencing what it’s like to be kidnapped and what it’s like to be a parent whose kid had just been kidnapped. Whenever I hear that a child has been kidnapped, I always wonder “what is going through the child’s mind?”, “what are the kidnapper(s) doing to the child?”, and “how are the parents coping?” I think Equiano did a great of capturing the amount of grief and despair that a child goes through when they are kidnapped. Two of my favorite quotes that stuck out to me from the section were:
“…being quite overpowered by fatigue and grief, our only relief was some sleep, which allayed our misfortune for a short time.”, and “ …the only comfort we had was in being in one another’s arms all that night, and bathing each other with our tears.” (Equiano 201)
These quotes were particularly sorrowful because they painted a clear picture of how much anguish Equiano and his sister were in. After being kidnapped and unsuccessfully trying to signal for help, they found a slight bit of comfort of grieving together but, they were soon separated from each other which heightened the severity of the situation. When Equiano stated “she was torn from me” (201), I got the visual image of a mother whose fetus was ripped out of her stomach by kidnappers, and was left for dead without a baby whom she’d been carrying inside of her for several months. The pain, anguish, lifelessness and emptiness of what this mother felt is what I think Equiano experienced when he was separated from his sister. This was a very powerful descriptive for me.
Another scene from the narrative that I found to be compelling was the scene where Equiano ran and hid into the bushes due to the fear of being flogged for accidentally killing a chicken. Up until this point, Equiano had been planning his escape from the chieftain and his two wives but during this scene, he becomes hopeless. The whole neighborhood was looking for Equiano and some of them came really close to finding him. “ I then gave myself up for lost entirely, and expected every moment, when I heard a rustling among the trees, to be found out, and punished by my master: but they never discovered me, though they were often so near that I even heard their conjectures as they were looking about for me” (Equiano 202). This description took me back a terrifying movie scene where the killer walks into the homeowner’s bedroom, but doesn’t find her hiding in the closest after doing a violent search of them room. This scene made me anxious and nervous. I believe that God was watching over Equiano and was protecting him from harm.
While in hiding, Equiano overhears one of the searchers saying that he could not have ran home because home was too far away and the path was too intricate (202). Equiano then threw himself into despair and a violent attack. This scene touched by heart because I wanted Equiano to be reunited with his family and this hope was built up by the fact that Equiano was planning to escape. But after hearing this, all hope was lost that Equiano would ever reunite with his family. I found it amazing and saddening that Equiano felt like he could escape from the animals of the wild, but he could not escape the animals of human kind (Equiano 202). This was saddening to me because generally speaking, I would feel safer with another human being than I would with a lion. It’s just really sad when you feel like you are the prey of both humans and animals. When in this situation, where do you go for comfort and safety? Unfortunately, for Equiano, he felt like death would’ve been his only comfort. Equiano was still a young boy at this time. No child should ever have to feel like this.
The last scene that I found to be very compelling was the scene on the slave ship.
Once Equiano got onto the slave ship, I think he was certain of his fate. He had never seen Europeans before and he was absolutely horrified by their image and the unfamiliar language they spoke. When Equiano saw the other blacks chained up and saw the amount of “dejection and sorrow” (206) they were expressing, it horrified him to the point that he passed out. I can’t imagine how frightened he was. If I saw people of my kind chained, abused, and in grief, it would frighten me too. When in scary situations, children look to adults for safety and security. What are you to do when the adults are just as frightened as you are and you’re a child? If I were a child in this situation I would feel hopeless, horrified, and scared for my life. There was a massive amount of brutal cruelty that took place on the slave ship from excessive flogging to the suffocation of innocent slaves. Equiano wished for death to comfort him many times throughout the narrative but the compassion in the way he stated it this time really broke my heart. “Often did I think many of the inhabitants of the deep much happy than myself. I envied them the freedom they enjoyed, and as often wished I could change my condition for theirs” (Equiano
208).
Equiano suffered a lot of pain a result of being robbed of his freedom. I am also inspired by Olaudah Equiano because even though all of the pain and grief he suffered he was still very curious and eager to learn. In the end, Equiano learned to read and write and adopted a new way of living. Equiano was eventually baptized and kept a strong belief in God. I admire him for going through so much pain and suffrage and for having the courage to tell his story.
References
Equiano, Olaudah. "Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano." The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2004. 189-212. Print.