Question

What is the overall point of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself? What is his story referencing and why?

Answer 1

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African is an autobiography written by Olaudah Equiano in 1789 in London. The book primarily focuses on how he was kidnapped from East Africa when he was 11 and brought to West Indies and then sold as a slave to someone in the UK.
He narrates the journey across Atlantic to America and England, the difference in treatment in the two countries, the hardships he undergoes, his work in the plantation and in the sea, the brutality of the white people and eventually buying his freedom from his new master Robert King. He wrote this autobiography after becoming a Freeman which contributed and motivated the anti-slavery movements.
He accounts how the slaves were cunningly stolen by the white to work in the plantations and ships. He also narrates the painful life as a slave and the graceful endurance of the slaves because they were insecure. His narrations provide us with the inhuman and uncivilised nature of the white people of that time.