The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African

Introduction

By introducing readers to measures of the exotic, the imagination, and the search for self-identity, 'The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano' not only serves as good entertainment, but also has didactic value and begs further study. The painful experience of slavery is a subject that is difficult to address for the black writer, once he finish the fight for emancipation. This paper discusses the significance of textual moment in relation to Equiano's journey to become British.

Olaudah Equiano

Olaudah Equiano, born about 1745 in Biafra in present Nigeria , died in Cambridge shire on 31 March 1797 , better known in his time under the name of Gustavus Vassa , was a sailor and a writer British Calvinist d African origin lived mainly in the British colonies of America and the United Kingdom. Son of a wealthy family Ebo, Equiano became a slave at the age of ten years . Moved to Barbados, he was acquired by a British officer whom he accompanied to Virginia and then in England. Baptized, he was named European "Gustavus Vassa". Equiano became a Marine and served his master during the Seven Years' War . Sold to a dealer, he bought, July 11, 1766, freedom for forty pounds . He served as a barber in London in 1767, before heading off again to reach successively the New England , the Nicaragua and regions Arctic in the expedition led by British naturalist Constantine John Phipps in 1773 (Olaudah, 1-100) .

He became an influential figure in the abolition of slavery and accompanied the installation of the first former black slaves to Freetown in Sierra Leone. The fight was not always successful. Thus, in 1783, with Granville Sharp, he sought to advance the abolitionist cause, arguing that a slave was not on a ship, a commodity like others. Indeed, the ship-owner slaver Zong, whose captain had been "coerced" in 1781 to jettison its cargo of 132 slaves affected by an epidemic to avoid contagion, was addressed to British courts to determine whether it was legitimate to be indemnified by his insurance as they could be in such a case when it came to animals. Despite the efforts of Equiano and Sharp, the Lord Chief Justice Mansfield concluded that "it was so shocking that, if slaves were exactly comparable to that of horses" (Paul, 34-65).

At the request of abolitionist Olaudah Equiano published his autobiography in 1789, as The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa The African, Written by Himself, one of the very few direct evidence of the slave trade by of those having lived as a slave , testimony widely used by British abolitionist movement and the distribution of which contributed greatly to the fame of the former slave. Thus, there is a portrait of Equiano he did run in 1780 . He is represented as a young man in red coat and wig. The fact that this portrait ...