Reaction Paper About Olaudah Equiano

Olaudah Equiano was born in March 1745 and died in 1797 at the age of 52. He was born in Present-Day Nigeria and at a young age of 11, he was kidnapped and sold into slavery. As a slave, he experienced life on the Middle Passage, when he was sent to the West Indies. He was first bought by Michael Pascal and during those years, he heard about Christianity and even started to learn how to read and write. This was very rare because the one thing that Whites were not allowed to do to Blacks was teach them how to read and write, but they were allowed to rape, murder, and sell them. The Whites were afraid that teaching the slaves would give too much power to them. Because Equiano began to ponder about his freedom, Pascal cruelly sold him to another slave owner, Captain Doran, and then Doran sold him to Robert King, and then King gave Equiano to Captain Thomas Farmer. Equiano went through four slave owners before he saved and raised enough money to earn his own freedom in 1766, which he described as the happiest day of his life. Because of his strong belief of abolishment, he wrote and published his autobiography, "The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano", which became a bestseller. The book described his experiences he …show more content…
When he first saw the vessel, he was astonished but that quickly turned into fear. Due to his unknown knowledge about what was going on he thought he was going to be eaten. He often talked the bout the stench and how bad it was. "The stench of the hold, while we were on the coast, was so intolerably loathsome, that it was dangerous to remain there". Olaudah also talked about he was on the middle passage for 3 to 4 months and when he got there he was so amused to see the structure of Barbados. He didn't understand the Europeans or their language, so he was often confused but caught on to context