Olaudah Equiano Summary

Olaudah Equiano's autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, published in 1789, is significant for numerous reasons. Firstly, it is one of the very rare scripts written in English by an individual of African ancestry during the eighteenth century. Secondly, it is one of the initial accounts of a passage up from captivity written by someone who had personally gone through enslavement. This makes Equiano’s narrative one of the earliest “slave narratives” that existed. However, it is more than simply a detailed account of what it was like to be a captive. In his narrative, Equiano gives an extensive and thorough account of growing up in an African village – one of the first depictions …show more content…
An unknown that is, concerning a fellow of letters, one who shook up the people back in 1789. British readers were fascinated by his first-hand account of being abducted and imprisoned at age 11 and hauled from Nigeria to the New World in a horror-filled captivity vessel. Equiano's story has long been seen as the conclusive version of the notorious “middle passage”, one of the very first captivity tales, a detailed account that gave the inexpert abolitionist crusade a ringing ethical authority. The only problem is that it may not be …show more content…
I don’t think anyone disputes that Equiano was the final self-made man, knowledgeable, intelligent, a captive whom paid for his own liberty, became a seaman, operated a plantation in Central America where he acquired and traded captives, had a change of heart and became an protestor, and later, while he lived in England, made a fortune off his self-published autobiographies, leaving wealth to his mixed British