Olaudah Equiano -- Other Perspectives

Equiano's narrative was and is fascinating to me for many reasons. It was especially interesting to read a slave narrative from such an early period -- I'd never read this particular exposition before, and in comparison with works from authors such as Douglass and Jacobs, who were writing much later, much of the information and descriptions were very new to me.

Equiano's descriptions of his relationships with the various men and women who came to be in possession of him were particularly interesting to me. Perhaps because he was enslaved in Europe for a longish period of time and not often limited to the shore when in the Americas his narrative displays a kinship with his captors that is decisively lacking in other slave narratives (at least, in those that I am familiar with). He certainly strikes me as a man cut from a much different cloth than Douglass. He was no stranger to adversity, but he met his slavery and in particular his bid for freedom from a much different perspective. Douglass's Narrative portrays an entirely self-made man, reliant for the most part not on outside help for his freedom (and those times he admits to help he refuses to name they who came to his aid on the idea that were he to name them they might meet adversity due to the Fugitive Slave law, etc.). Equiano, on the other hand, works on the side to make the proper amount of money to purchase his freedom from his master. Both are certainly self-made, but in a different manner quite probably due to outside forces as well as environment.

All things considered, Equiano seems to have had a much better time of the slave trade than the authors of any other slave narrative I've read. We do often hear about benevolent masters, but not as often from the perspective of the enslaved. Equiano's narrative, while not painting slavery in any sort of positive light does however manage to maintain the Enlightenment concepts of morality and the overall goodness of man -- a fact which is both inspiring and downright confusing, in light of the subject matter. I should very much like the read his narrative in its entirety, as I'm not exactly sure what to make of it from the excerpts that we read. It definitely begs a great deal more thought.