Preview

"The Middle Passage" by Olaudah Equiano

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
754 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
"The Middle Passage" by Olaudah Equiano
"The Middle Passage" by Olaudah Equiano

“The Middle Passage” from “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Myself” is a traumatic narrative of the horrors suffered by the Africans slaves of the 18th century, which has touched my heart. No human being should ever have to endure what the African slaves and their families endured during slavery and voyage through the “The Middle Passage”. The Middle Passage was called the route of the triangular trade through the Atlantic Ocean in which millions of people from Africa were shipped to the New World as part of the Atlantic slave trade.

The author starts by giving details of the terrible conditions that he encounters on board of a slave ship. An example of the terrible condition in which the slaves lived is narrated by Equiano (2013) as: “The stench of the hold while we were on the coast was so intolerably loathsome, that it was dangerous to remain there for any time…” (1388) “The closeness of the place, 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 suffocated us” (p.1388).

The conditions the Africans slaves endured during the Middle Passage were horrific; no human being should be force to live in such deplorable conditions. The lack of freedom on the slave ships caused great distress to the enslaved Africans. They were treated as cargo, chained one with the other and had to perform their bodily functions while chained. They were also forced to sleep cramped together few of them barely escaped without their limbs atrophying. They rarely had enough to eat or drink, and would grow sick in drove, than many of them wanted to die instead of living a life full of cruelties. The slaves were so tired of the detrimental conditions in which they have been forced to live in slave ships, under the most abominable and hellish hygienic conditions i that they preferred to die,



References: Equiano, Olaudah (2013), The Middle Passage from “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano 's, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Myself”, The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 9th Major Author’s edition, Abrams, Ed. W.W. Norton & Company, New York.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    “The Horrors of a Slave Ship,” describes in detail, the tragic experiences of Olaudah Equiano as a captive slave. Equiano suffered many sleepless nights; he was flogged and kidnapped multiple times. In the article, the author is trying to give the reader the feeling by giving details of the brutally floggings and desperation as many slaves suffocated to death as they were placed in an overcrowded deck. Overall, the author tries to give readers their point across of the difficulties in being a captive slave.…

    • 1021 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Frederick Douglass

    • 706 Words
    • 3 Pages

    As a slave, Douglass experienced cruelty so severe that it demonstrated how slaveholders viewed their slaves. In being treated as animals and given nothing, slaves had nothing to call their own, not even a bed to sleep in at night. As said in Douglass memoir on page six, “There was no bed given to slaves, unless one coarse blanket be considered such, and none but women and men had these.” With this being said, Douglass refers to what slaves had to sleep on, “And when this is done, old and young, male and female, married and single, drop down side by side one common bed-the cold, damp, floor.” Not given anything, slaves had no choice but to adapt to these dreadful conditions and without a voice, had to live up to the expectations of being less than humans.…

    • 706 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Slave Ship

    • 1386 Words
    • 6 Pages

    The Slave Ship by Marcus Rediker is a great fiction novel that describes the horrifying experiences of Africans, seamen, and captains on their journey through the Middle Passage. The Middle Passage marked the water way in the Atlantic Ocean between Africa and the Americas. The use of slaves provided a great economy for the European countries due to the fact that these African slaves provided free labor while cultivating sugar cane in the Caribbean and America. Rediker describes the slave migration by saying, “There exists no account of the mechanism for history’s greatest forced migration, which was in many ways the key to an entire phase of globalization” (10). This tells us that African enslavement to the Americas causes a complete shift in the balance of globalization. Africans who became enslaved were usually prisoners of war between tribes. Merchants would give goods to the chiefs of villages for these people. Men, women, and children were stripped away from their own homes by being kidnapped, as well. These slaves would travel up to six months to the coast of the Atlantic Ocean to reach what is known as the “slave ship”. From here, they were abused by having to live in a harsh environment in the journey through the Middle Passage. Many slaves would not even make it to their destination, but those who did were sold to spend the rest of their life cultivated mainly sugar cane. Rediker offers new insights to human history by researching many documents to find the hard truth in this novel to how slavery was introduced in the Americas. Rediker uses his research to explain how difficult it was for Africans to be introduced to the harsh lifestyle of slavery. He uses many diaries of the slave ships captains, and even a few slaves, to bring to life the brutality that was inflicted to these innocent people emotionally and physically on the slave ship.…

    • 1386 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Middle Passage

    • 508 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The article “The Middle Passage”, by Daniel Mannix and Malcolm Crowley, is an overview of slave trade from 1507 until it was illegalized in 1808. “The Middle Passage” was specifically the obtaining, transportation, and sell of African slaves in the New World. This article discusses the horrible treatment slaves received during Atlantic slave trading.…

    • 508 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Olaudah Equiano Slavery

    • 657 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Slaves, in general, endured unthinkable things while, on the Middle Passage Ship to the Americas as well as their duration in slavery, Olaudah Equiano was no different. After reading Olaudah Equiano’s, article “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African”. Slavery affected many lives. Most importantly, as any slave it was additionally agonizing to live in that period. Through Equiano’s eleven-year-old eyes, his voyage was extremely devastating.…

    • 657 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Shock of Enslavement

    • 441 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The voyage from Africa to North America was a six- to eight-week-long ocean voyage called the Middle Passage. Men were wedged below decks in spaces about 6 feet long, 16 inches wide, and 30 inches high. Women and children were packed even more tightly. The slaves were forced to stay below decks most of the time where the smell of vomit, blood, and other body fluids grew rancid. Some slaves went insane from the cooped up conditions, and hearing shrieks and groans of pain or dying. Others refused to eat. On many voyages, between 5 and 20 percent of the slaves died from disease and other causes.…

    • 441 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    3. The Middle Passage is the journey the abducted slaves undertook while going to the new world. This trip was treacherous for these African people because they were forced to live in unsanitary conditions, confined to chains, whipped and tortured.…

    • 1498 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Olaudah Equiano. “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavas Vassa, The African,” in The Classic Slave Narratives, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (New York: Signet Classic, 2002), 98.…

    • 1277 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Olaudah Equiano Summary

    • 1289 Words
    • 6 Pages

    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…

    • 1289 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano”, by Olaudah Equiano, is a narrative about a slave going to the new world. Olaudah Equiano was kidnapped by slave traders to be sent to the New World to be sold to other slave owners. This slave trade between Africa and North America was from 1619-1807 and carried hundreds of African men, women, and children in one tightly packed ship. In “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano”, Equiano describes the horrible conditions slaves were forced to endure on the voyage to the new world. Equiano wrote this slave narrative, a literary work that exposes the horrors of slavery through the first hand experience of the writer, to help abolish slavery. To assist in persuading the…

    • 194 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Middle Passage Dbq

    • 328 Words
    • 2 Pages

    During the time of the Middle Passage, the people on the various slave ships suffered constantly because of sickness, cruelty to the Africans, and lack of food and water. I didn’t matter what race they were because they were all stuck on the same boat, with the same diseases going around. The conditions of the boat they were staying on were unacceptable. There was blood and mucus all over the floor boards from the disease called the flux, which caused a lot of slaves to catch the flux as well and die off (Document C). A slave Ship Doctor named Alexander Falconbridge said that the place where the slaves stayed “resembled a slaughter house” and coming from a white doctor, this means a lot because he was sticking up fro the slaves (Document C).…

    • 328 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Guatavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself (1789)…

    • 307 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Subordinate Groups

    • 766 Words
    • 4 Pages

    I arrived here in America in the early 1800’s from Nigeria, Africa; through what was referred to as the Middle Passage: the name Africans gave to the trip across the Atlantic Ocean to New World enslavement. I was taken from my homeland against my will. I belonged to the tribe of Yoruba which made up about 24% of the slave population here in America. Enslaved Africans represented many different peoples, each with distinct cultures, religions, and languages. Most originated from the coast or the interior of West Africa, between present-day Senegal and Angola. Other enslaved peoples originally came from Madagascar and Tanzania in East Africa. (Nile of the New World)On the ship ride over we were loaded in the lower part of the ship chained to one another. There were so many of us packed in one area that there was hardly any room to spare like animals. When it was time to eat we were fed as though we were dogs they threw the food down to us and the strongest were the only one who ate. I remember the horrible odor that came from those who had defecated on the long trip over. Many on the trip became ill and some even died because of disease but it didn’t matter, they were just unshackled and thrown overboard. The day the long trip was finally over I can remember we were removed from the ship and looked over meticulously from head to toe as though we were some animal being checked for any type defect to be later taken to the auction block to be sold to the highest bidder. I can remember wondering “where am I and what is this strange language I hear?” not realizing that I would one day be beaten for using my native tongue.…

    • 766 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    “Sails furled, flag dropping at her rounded stern, she rode the tide in from the sea. She was a strange ship, indeed, by all accounts, a frightening ship, a ship of mystery.”(Pg. 23, J. Redding) Without knowing what was to come they looked at the ship with most likely a look of shock. Not knowing what was to come, ahead of their journey and with this beaut they might have thought no need to worry. But she was the beginning of misery. The chapter goes on about how it was to be a slave, how and why they became slaves or known at the beginning as “servants”. As well as how they differed from white servants and the unfairness of it all.…

    • 1013 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The Atlantic Slave Trade lasted some 300 years and with it brought about 12.5 million slaves out of Africa. Out of that 12.5 million, about 10.7 million were shipped to the Americas. Although there were only about 6 percent of African captives who were sent directly to British North America, by 1825, the United States already had a quarter of blacks in the New World (Gilder Lehrman Institute). Revolts almost always ended in casualties or torture carried out by the ship crew. (Marcum and Skarbek, 2014). The Middle Passage was its own form of torture. The conditions on the boats were almost unlivable, with the slaves packed closely together and kept naked. On each trip, about 12% of the slaves who embarked did not survive (Gilder Lehrman Institute).…

    • 2109 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays