Essays on Olaudah Equiano

As a civilization grows and develops its own distinct culture, a religion is often formed to best understand how the world around the tribe works. While some cultures have a very distinct set of beliefs, customs, and practices, most can be linked under broad umbrellas....

Olaudah Equiano’s autobiography “The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano: or Gustavus Vassa, the African,” presents a created identity of the “enlightened slave,” as a means of appealing to the pathos of the British and American people regarding the trans-Atlantic slave trade. By establishing that he...

Olaudah Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano is one of history’s most raw and multifaceted arguments for the abolition of slavery. Seized and forced into the slave trade when he was only eleven, Equiano tells his story as a member of...

By the time Olaudah Equiano died in 1797 he had amassed a sizable fortune, visited four continents, and written a detailed account of his enslavement in the British colonies (Carey). It was this latter act that reserved him a place in history as one of...

Throughout his text, Equiano’s definition of abolition desired to end the slave trade while reforming slavery into a more considerate, cordial institution. Furthermore, this was illustrated throughout the novel because although Equiano was a slave himself, he believed in private property. In addition, he is...

Spiritual autobiographies, or conversion narratives, were popular forms of literature in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with Americans and Europeans alike. Daniel Shea explains a spiritual autobiography is “primarily concerned with the question of grace: whether or not the individual has been accepted into divine...