The Transatlantic Slave Trade Olaudah Equiano Summary

Many attribute the transatlantic slave trade to merely being an overtly inhumane business transaction of the past; therefore, many of the descriptions of this time are often generic and fail to give any true insight into the reality of these circumstances. Olaudah Equiano’s first hand account provides the reader with great insights into life of an African from capture, aboard the ship during the middle passage, and landing in Barbados in 1789. Equiano’s candid perspective as an individual who lived to tell the tale of the slave trade is more significant than that from the perspective of a trader because they had a limited insight into the events Africans faced during this time. Slave traders and captains of ships merely saw the slave trade as an occupation and
business and lived full and separate lives while those like Equiano, who were captured, were ultimately stripped of their lives and forced into a new life that was out of their control.
Equiano begins his account by stating that he was captured as a child he was taken to the coast after roughly six to seven months. He then describes several key elements: the white men, African thought’s of their final destination, and conditions aboard the ship. Equiano states he had never seen the white men who were a stark contrast to his own appearance with long hair and pale skin, he believed them to be before being flogged for not eating and witnessing them punish other Africans and even their own for any infraction. He then describes the unsanitary living conditions, attributed to close living quarters under deck. The physical detriments were many putrid smells of death, bodily fluids, and of the ailments suffered as illness spread easily in these conditions. Lastly, throughout
his account Equiano expresses feelings of uncertainty of whether or not he was to be eaten by these white men who were foreign to him and not knowing his fate. Furthermore, he describes seeing various Africans taking their own lives adding to the psychological damage suffered aboard the ship. These descriptions of pure confusion, fear, and uncertainty support the notion that those who were taken were unaware of the circumstances surrounding these events and their final destination. Equiano presents that a jumble of various African ethnic groups were thrown into an inadequate and undersized cesspool of infection and scared into submission by fear of being physically tortured by their white captors aboard the slave ships. Equiano’s account is ironic because while it is a common misconception to depict African people as savages, Equiano suggests that the Africans saw the white men as the true savages based on their behaviors and treatment of the Africans. While this account shows a two dimensional, limited first person perspective, the film The Middle Passage, offers an overall look into the stretch enslaved Africans endured aboard ships as they traveled between Africa and sugar plantations through the eyes of a slave that initially was a servant for his own people, King Dehomey, that later became sold to the French. While the actions and events portrayed in the film are a reenactment, it does work in favor of complimenting the primary document by allowing people to have a three dimensional visual representation of the conditions that accurately parallels Equiano’s description of living conditions and hardships aboard the ships. This is effective in emphasizing the severity of the situation while also evoking feelings of empathy for the Africans who were taken, shock at the reality of the transatlantic trade system, and contempt for the slave traders that upheld this practice.