Olaudah Equiano Summary

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano was written by none other than Olaudah Equiano himself. The document in Strayer’s text is the first two chapters out of Equiano’s book of his own personal accounts with the Atlantic slave trade which, he published in London in 1789 to influence Europeans during the rising of an abolitionist movement. More specifically Equiano wanted to convince European Christians that what they were doing was wrongful in God’s eyes. The most important revelation from this text is the that of the truth of what the Europeans put the slaves through. In history the story is usually told by the winner not the loser and in this case the conquerors tell most of the stories. When those who are doing the wrong
With Equiano being a slave, especially at the time of the book being published, many people would have never trusted his word over that of a Europeans. However, his story is not portrayed as awful as many might think the slave trade was. He told of how he was kidnapped from his home and separated from his sister but, he then goes on to talk about how nice some of his masters are. For example, he tells about a master’s wife who did all she could to comfort him and became like a mom to him (Equiano, p30). This gives a whole new perspective on the slave trade. When Europeans tell the story it is we bought some people from one landed and took them to the next to be used for labor. We do not see the actual relationships the slaves make with the families who buy them and when that part of the story gets told it makes the slaves appear more human to the readers. Which helps Equiano with convincing the European Christians that they are treating slaves as less of humans when in fact they are the same in God’s
Many may say that because of his intentions he of course would be against slavery and try to convince others of that as well. However, Equiano begins by stating that his town did in fact have slaves and sell slaves to travelers. The difference between what happened to Equiano and the slaves from his community is that he had done nothing to deserve his life of slavery while, slaves in his town were those who were prisoners of war or who had crimes like kidnapping, adultery, and others that were deemed worthy (Equiano, p30). Equiano’s motive is not just to end slavery but, more importantly inform of the things that are wrong about how slavery was handled. He was kidnapped from his family out of nowhere and when he finally was comfortable in a new place he was moved again. He did not deserve a life of slavery yet, he never received the security of being with a single family for more than a little while all because he was unfortunate enough to randomly one day be picked up by a strange at his own