Middle Passage Olaudah Equiano

The middle passage is known for the major amount of cruelty that Africans experienced when they were taken across the Atlantic to the West Indies. Africans were treated harshly and due to the weather conditions and lack of care, many died along the way. In the story of “The interesting narrative of the life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African”, the author gives a raw experience of the middle passage. Thanks to this story, the reader is able to experience the middle passage from the African’s point of view. Here it will be discussed based of this story what the main causes were towards mortality and what the perceptions were between the Europeans and Africans. In the passage, Equiano describes the different hardships that the …show more content…
There is a part in the passage where the narrator describes the Europeans as “white men with horrible looks”, this shows nothing but negative thoughts that the Europeans had created in the Africans due to their brutal and cruel actions that they performed on the ship. Also, in many parts of the story the narrator also mentions that amount of fear that he carried with him all the time, he even sometimes questioned his chances of surviving in there due to the mistreatment that he observed from the Europeans. Unfortunately, the perception that Europeans had towards the Africans is not very clear in the story since the point of view of the story comes from an African. But, there is a part in the story where the narrator mentions how one of the Europeans died from hitting a slave brutally hard. The narrator also mentions how astonished he was from watching the amount of anger that the European expressed towards this African. Also, the perception coming from the Europeans is very evident by just looking at their actions described in the story. At the end of the story the narrator recalls how a family was separated when they were sold. This scene showed how the Europeans were willing to sacrifice the feelings of the slaves for the avarice that they had and the lust of gain, as it is described by the narrator in the