Olaudah Equiano

- Born in Nigeria - Kidnapped with sister at age 11 for Slave Trade - Transported around Africaa for 6 to 7 months away from sister and then boarded ship to Barbados (sugar plantations, "Middle passage:) - Sold to British Military officers and served in Seven Year's War - Purchased by quakers in philidelphia

- While working as a slave for a Quaker in Philadelphia he managed his master's business and purchased freedom in 1766 (age 21)

- became sailor and took exciting expeditions - settled in England as free servant musician and barber

- Exposed injustices and slavery became disputed issue in English Parliament - Campaigned through writing

- wrote first great black autobiography which influenced colonists - Married Susanna Cullen - Defined himself as "the African"

- end of puritan period and beginning of age of reason - slavery in colonies since 1690

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

hyperbole, pathetic fallacy personification, simile, imagery

an exaggeration for effect

when nature reflects human emotions

human emotions given to inanimate objects

comparison using like or as

language that evokes particular sensations or emotionally rich experiences in a reaer

"Bathing each other with our tears" "If ten thousand worlds had been my own, I would have freely parted with them all to have exchanged my condition with that of the meanest slave in my own country"

- furnace and copper boiling conveys images of hell, heat =misery - Stench and sickness under deck (crowding, lack of air)

my last friend, death

- Chieftan----> comforts him, first wife is like his mother, speak the same language - Sister reunion----> allowed to share a bed with her - Widow and her son ----> washed and perfumed, forgets that he is a slave, served by slaves

- Familiar: same language and culture - Decency: reunion with teacher, mistreated as punishment only - Luxuries: beautiful streams, coconuts, trees with fruit, sugar cane

- Cruelty: tossed, flogged, treated like animad, starved just enough to live - Foreign: unknown language, white skin and long hair, evil spirits (magic to sail the ship) - criticizes christianity: do unto others as you would like done to you