Olaudah Equiano: A Life Of A Slave

In the year of 1758 an eleven-year-old boy named Olaudah Equiano was one of millions of Africans to be kidnapped from his homeland and sold into slavery. Equiano was forced to leave behind and forget his Ibo religion, his family, and anything else that he once knew. This young boy was then forced aboard a ship sailing towards a new land where he and hundreds of others were crammed into the vessel as if they were cargo. On this voyage these people were first stripped of their basic human rights and treated as if they were cattle. During this time Olaudah Equiano as well as all the others was kept in ignorance of what was to become of their lives. Only exposed to mistreatment and depravity, Equiano and countless others lost a sense of identity …show more content…
When a young Equiano arrives upon the Virginia soil, he was given the name Jacob, but “...on board the African Snow, I was called Michael.” (Equiano 700). Within Olaudah Equiano’s village in Africa, he was known as the son of a highly regarded chief. The title of Equiano’s father was to one day be passed on to him and this was the identity he knew, however, in an instant he was kidnapped and sent to an unfamiliar land where he met a new race of people who considered him to be not a person, but property. Olaudah Equiano was eventually purchased by a man named Michael Henry Pascal. Pascal brings Equiano with him to England with the intention of presenting him as a gift. With a change of mind, Pascal then decides to keep his new slave and gives him the name Gustavus Vassa. Equiano remembered, “I at that time began to understand him a little, and refused to be called so, and told him as well as I could that I would be called Jacob; but he said I should not, and still called me Gustavus: and when I refused to answer to my new name, which I at first did, it gained me many a cuff; so at length I submitted, and by which I have been known ever since.” (Equiano 701). The simple fact that a slave owner had the ability to change a slave’s name whenever they saw fit reinforced the idea that a slave was property and not a person deserving basic human rights and because of this, slaves began to lose their concept of identity as human and began to see themselves as another person’s property. Equiano said that “I no longer looked upon them as spirits, but as men superior to us…” (Equiano 702). However, it is with Michael Pascal that Equiano first discovers his affection for the sea. Pascal went on several different commissions while fighting for England, and Equiano accompanied Pascal on many of these endeavors. Equiano learned arithmetic and many other