44 pages • 1 hour read
Olaudah EquianoThe Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, the African
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1789A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Introduction-Chapter 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Introduction Summary
Facing the title page is an image (the frontispiece) of the author dressed in fine clothes and holding a book. The frontispiece bears this caption: “Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African” (36). Beneath that is Isaiah 12: 2 and 4, a Christian biblical scripture in which the prophet Isaiah proclaims his trust in God and the mandate to take Christianity to all people.
Equiano directly addresses members of the British Parliament and the lords of England, his primary audience, by asking them to forgive any artistic deficiency in the work. His aim is to share the realities of the slave trade by recounting his own story. After the letter is a long list of subscribers, many of them respected people with titles and whose funds supported the publication of the project.
Chapter 1 Summary
As Chapter 1 opens, Equiano first explains why he is writing the book. He is not writing it out of vanity or because he is one of the great men about whom people are accustomed to reading in memoirs. The events he will recount, no matter how horrifying, are normal for people like him. In fact, he feels blessed that he survived slavery and became a Christian in the West as a result of his capture.
Equiano was born in 1745. He describes the legal, social, cultural, religious, economic, and scientific traditions of the Igbo (Ebo), his ethnic group. As he describes the Igbo, he notes their cleanliness, their distaste for profanity, the modesty and morality of Igbo women, and practices that they have in common with Jewish people. Using references to intellectuals of the day, he speculates that the Igbo and Jewish people may be distantly related, despite the difference in skin color.
Equiano also describes slavery as a practice among the Igbo and other African territories, but he notes that enslaved people in his part of the world had rights and privileges not extended to enslaved people in the West Indies. People who do become enslaved are frequently captives of war. Those who practice slavery may do so out of a desire to trade the enslaved for European or other goods. As to the claims that enslaved people in the West are inherently inferior to free people, Equiano asks the reader to consider that the debased state of enslaved people may be due to poor treatment by their captors. All people are equal in God’s eyes, so free Europeans should extend sympathy to the enslaved and reconsider any sense of superiority they may harbor.
Chapter 2 Summary
Equiano recalls his early life with fondness, but this happy existence ended abruptly one day when kidnappers captured Equiano and his sister. At first, Equiano had his sister to comfort him, but their captors eventually separated them. Equiano ended up with the family of a chieftain for a month, a time during which he did all he could to find out exactly where he was or how to escape. These attempts proved futile. Shortly after the chieftain’s favorite child died, the family sold Equiano. The slave traders moved Equiano on and sold him to people even more distant from his home.
Equiano had a brief reunion with his sister, who happened to be come by the house of Equiano’s new owners. His captors allowed Equiano and his sister to sleep in the same room that night, a kindness that distinguished them from the European slave owners and traders Equiano later encountered. Equiano felt fresh grief in the morning when they were parted from each other again, and he shares his feelings in a highly emotional address to his sister.
Equiano was sold again, this time to owners in Tinmah. Equiano goes into specific detail about the food, money, and ways of its people. He was once again sold when a visitor to the household took a fancy to him. Equiano became a companion of the son of the house, and the family treated him so well that he almost forgot that he was enslaved by them. This idyll lasted two months, and then his owners sold him. The contrast between these happy months and the misery of being sold again almost overwhelmed Equiano. He was once again on the road with his captors.
This time, he was so far from his home that he could hardly understand the language. He describes how different their customs were from those of the Igbo. Even more astonishing was the big river, the largest body of water he had ever seen in his life. Also surprising were the canoe into which his captors put him for transport and that people swam in the river. Equiano’s captors succeeded in getting him to the Atlantic coast. Equiano tells the reader he will not relate every little event because that would be tedious; here, he notes only that these places had rich soil, bountiful crops, and men and women who were trained to fight.
At the coast, Equiano saw a “slave ship, which was then riding at anchor, and waiting for its cargo” (35). He moved from “astonishment, which was soon converted into terror” (35) when people forced him on board the ship. As he saw the white sailors aboard the ship, he wondered if they were “evil spirits” (35). They looked so strange, spoke an incomprehensible language, and stood beside a large copper pot, which Equiano suspected was where they would cook him before eating him.
Looking back, Equiano remembers his terror and how he would have given anything to have been elsewhere, even if it meant being a slave in his own country. His original captors, their money now in hand, tried to reassure him that these strange men would not eat him. They offered Equiano some liquor. The drink made him woozy, and things got worse once his original captors left him. Equiano knew he would never be able to return home.
The people aboard the ship forced him into the hold, and the vile smell and darkness nearly made him sick. When he refused to eat the food the people offered him, they took him on deck, tied him up, and whipped him. Had he not been tied up, he would have leapt over the side to escape. He spent the rest of his time chained on the ship deck.
Equiano encountered people from his own country. They told him their captors were taking them to the captors’ country, where they would be made to work. Equiano’s fear lessened, but the brutality he had experienced so far and continual beatings made him fear for his life. Europeans seemed to be especially given to cruelty, he concluded. He asked many questions about how the ship moved and why he had never heard of the people in control of the ship.
He was shocked one day to see another ship in full sail with even more white people in it. The traders forced Equiano and his fellow captives to board this new ship. Life on board was nearly intolerable. Masses of captives were in the hold, which was dark, crowded, and stank with bodily fluids. Many died in these unsanitary conditions. The cries, screams, and groans made a horrifying noise, while the chains created wounds on everyone’s flesh.
Equiano grew sick and his captors brought him to the deck to recover. Above deck, he saw more evidence of the cruelty of white people, so much so that he envied the dead. Some of his fellow captives leapt into the ocean to end their suffering. Even during this time, however, Equiano maintained his sense of wonder. He saw flying fish and watched the movements of the clouds as they were reflected in the water.
The ship eventually arrived in Bridge Town, Barbados. Equiano observed with curiosity the stone used for housing and the sight of people riding on horseback. The sale of the captives brought more brutality, with families and people from the same nations in Africa ripped from each indiscriminately. The signal to buy for the buyers was a loud noise, usually a drum, and that sound was also frightening. Even today, Equiano remains astounded by the cruelty and greed he witnessed.
Introduction-Chapter 2 Analysis
These initial chapters immediately account for the central place The Interesting Narrative has in the literature of slavery and literature by people of African descent in English. The Interesting Narrative includes genre elements that are important to the slave narrative, incorporates an account of the Middle Passage, and shows the influence of multiple genres on Equiano’s literary voice.
The slave narrative is a genre that aims to document the cruelty of slavery, sway readers to condemn the practice, and establish the credibility of the author to advance these arguments. Equiano aims to accomplish the latter at the book’s outset with its front matter. The image of Equiano, especially his dress and the book he holds in his hand, places in the mind of the reader that this man is a respectable author. In a moment when many white people questioned whether people of African descent were even capable of reason, this image is an assertive visual argument that Equiano is an author and knows how to use the visual codes to portray himself as a respectable man of letters. In addition, the caption on the image and the signature on the letter establish his credibility as a bicultural observer. By giving both his Igbo name and English name, he is letting the reader know that he has a place in both cultures, making him uniquely qualified to bring the African experience of slavery and emancipation to a white, English audience.
Equiano identifies the explicit rhetorical context of his work by stating in his letter that his narrative is intended to be evidence in the contemporary debate about slavery in Great Britain and its overseas territories. He exercises his persuasive powers by appealing to the emotions and morality of his readers by using words such as “horrors” (37) to describe the slave trade and by referencing God and providence multiple times in this short letter.
A decisive factor for readers who may wonder about his credibility may be the names of the subscribers who put up money to make sure the work would be published. This list includes reverends, lords, esquires, dukes, judges, earls, and the elite of England. This long list signals to any hesitant reader that Equiano’s work and account of slavery is truthful and has the weight of English society and religion behind it. Letters, lists of subscribers, and images like these in slave narratives are known as authenticating devices because they assure the reader of the credibility of the writer; they are important frames of the slave narrative because they explicitly address the tendency of white people to reject out of hand the ability of others to speak authoritatively on their own experiences.
The second significant element of these early chapters is Equiano’s account of the transatlantic slave trade. Equiano carefully describes an Igbo society that bears all the hallmarks of a developed civilization. This description is designed to counter the then-common idea that the African continent was a place that needed the intervention of European cultures and commerce. He also includes vivid imagery—the ocean, the ship, and the sea, the smells, and the sounds in the hold—to make the reality of the Middle Passage clear to his readers.
These descriptions pack a rhetorical punch. Equiano, just a boy when he was kidnapped, includes descriptions of the cruelty of his captors to make the case that their treatment of Africans is outside the bounds of what is considered Christian and civilized behavior. His description of the people who abuse him once he is aboard the slave ship and the conditions of the Middle Passage show that the European enslavers need to be held to account. Slavery brutalizes the enslaved, but it also diminishes the humanity and culture of those who profit from it.
While the political debate around slavery is an important context for reading this book, it is also important to note that this is a literary text. Equiano uses multiple literary genres in just this first part of the text. This book was popular because of the emotional and rhetorical appeals, but also because Equiano knows how to tell a good story. His 18th-century readers would have been consumers of travel narratives about exotic lands and people, and Equiano meets the expectations of readers by describing unfamiliar people (the Igbo) and strange sights like the flying fish he sees aboard the slave ship. Equiano’s comments about how unusual it is to read a memoir of an ordinary man also show his knowledge of memoir and biography as genres generally reserved for people like kings.
If the front matter is designed to shore up Equiano’s credibility for readers, the text in these initial chapters is a demonstration of his literacy and ability to use language to control his own representation. Combined with the authenticating devices and inclusion of interesting details, these literary moves provide support for a more general argument about the humanity and intellect of people of African descent in the West.
