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

“Behold, God is my salvation: I will trust and not be afraid, for the Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song; he also is become my salvation. And in that shall ye say, Praise the Lord, call upon his name, declare his doings among the people.—Isaiah 12:2–4.”

The inclusion of the Bible scripture highlights other sources of Equiano’s authority as an author, namely his Christian faith and the requirement that Christians share the Christian gospel. Including the scripture helps build connections with Christian readers and anticipates the impact of the Christian conversion narrative on rhetorical choices he makes later in the text.

“To the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and the Commons of the Parliament

of Great Britain:

My Lords and Gentlemen,

Permit me, with the greatest deference and respect, to lay at your feet the following genuine Narrative; the chief design of which is to excite in your august assemblies a sense of compassion for the miseries which the Slave Trade has entailed on my unfortunate countrymen. By the horrors of that trade was I first torn away from all the tender connections that were naturally dear to my heart; but these, through the mysterious ways of Providence, I ought to regard as infinitely more than compensated by the introduction I have thence obtained to the knowledge of the Christian religion, and of a nation which, by its liberal sentiments, its humanity, the glorious freedom of its government, and its proficiency in arts and sciences, has exalted the dignity of human nature.”

Equiano published his work using a common subscription model in which benefactors who wanted to read his work would advance the funds in part or in whole needed to get a publisher to print a work. The voluminous list of subscribers is evidence of the importance of Equiano’s work, while the inclusion of authorities like lords, bishops, and well-known abolitionists like Sharp lends credibility to Equiano. Equiano needs such credibility in order to gain a platform not usually granted to people of color on the issue of slavery.

“List of Subscribers: His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, His Royal Highness the Duke of York, […] The Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of London, […] Granville Sharp, Esq.”

Equiano published his work using a common subscription model in which benefactors who wanted to read his work would advance the funds in part or in whole needed to get a publisher to print a work. The voluminous list of subscribers is evidence of the importance of Equiano’s work, while the inclusion of authorities like lords, bishops, and well-known abolitionists like Sharp lends credibility to Equiano. Equiano needs such credibility in order to gain a platform not usually granted to people of color on the issue of slavery.

“I believe it is difficult for those who publish their own memoirs to escape the imputation of vanity; nor is this the only disadvantage under which they labour: it is also their misfortune, that what is uncommon is rarely, if ever, believed, and what is obvious we are apt to turn from with disgust, and to charge the writer with impertinence. People generally think those memoirs only worthy to be read or remembered which abound in great or striking events, those, in short, which in a high degree excite either admiration or pity: all others they consign to contempt and oblivion.”

Equiano’s opening lines show his sophisticated awareness of how complicated the demands of writing in autobiographical genres are. This knowledge helps establish him as a man of letters. This knowledge enhances his credibility for the audience. 

“It is therefore, I confess, not a little hazardous in a private and obscure individual, and a stranger too, thus to solicit the indulgent attention of the public; especially when I own I offer here the history of neither a saint, a hero, nor a tyrant. I believe there are few events in my life, which have not happened to many: it is true the incidents of it are numerous; and, did I consider myself a European, I might say my sufferings were great: but when I compare my lot with that of most of my countrymen, I regard myself as a particular favourite of Heaven, and acknowledge the mercies of Providence in every occurrence of my life.”

Equiano identifies one of the central tensions in slave narratives, which is that the author has both to show that the abuses of slavery are simultaneously so extreme that they are beyond what should be acceptable to society and so common as to be further evidence of the problem with the institution of slavery. His mention of that tension here highlights how he is forced to innovate to create a genre that can encompass both his life and the story of slavery. His mention that he is “neither a saint, a hero, nor a tyrant” is also evidence of his awareness of the conventions of biography and autobiography, which at the time tended to focus on powerful political and cultural figures.

“That part of Africa, known by the name of Guinea, to which the trade for slaves is carried on, extends along the coast above 3400 miles, from the Senegal to Angola, and includes a variety of kingdoms. Of these the most considerable is the kingdom of Benen […] It is situated nearly under the line, and extends along the coast about 170 miles, but runs back into the interior part of Africa to a distance hitherto I believe unexplored by any traveller; and seems only terminated at length by the empire of Abyssinia, near 1500 miles from its beginning. This kingdom is divided into many provinces or districts: in one of the most remote and fertile of which, called Eboe, I was born, in the year 1745, in a charming fruitful vale, named Essaka.”

The language here would be familiar to consumers of travel and conquest narratives related to European exploration outside of Europe. By using this formal, descriptive language and promising to reveal land and people that are previously unexplored, Equiano is meeting the expectations of an audience that is expecting to learn something about another culture. The exact reference to the location of his home and year of birth also allow Equiano to locate his early beginnings in African culture; many later examples of the slave narrative lack such specific detail about the origins of the writers’ ancestors. Such specificity fills in gaps in the literature of slavery and freedom, which explains why this is such a central text to that literary tradition.

“We are almost a nation of dancers, musicians, and poets. Thus every great event, such as a triumphant return from battle, or other cause of public rejoicing is celebrated in public dances, which are accompanied with songs and music suited to the occasion.”

Equiano satisfies the curiosity of his European readers by describing the culture of his home, allowing him to meet their expectations as readers of a travel narrative. In addition, his minute descriptions of the culture, laws, morals, and arts of his home help counter the notion that cultures of Africa are nonexistent or somehow lacking in civilization. Here and throughout, Equiano is intervening in the representation of African culture.

“Those prisoners which were not sold or redeemed we kept as slaves: but how different was their condition from that of the slaves in the West Indies! With us they do no more work than other members of the community, even their masters; their food, clothing and lodging were nearly the same as theirs, (except that they were not permitted to eat with those who were freeborn); and there was scarce any other difference between them, than a superior degree of importance which the head of a family possesses in our state, and that authority which, as such, he exercises over every part of his household. Some of these slaves have even slaves under them as their own property, and for their own use.”

Equiano accurately describes slavery as it appeared in African territories before the advent of the transatlantic slave trade with Europe. People could become enslaved as tributes of war, as he notes here. He distinguishes this form of slavery to the chattel slavery he encounters later by noting that enslaved people among the Igbo had some legal rights and perquisites, while those enslaved in Europe and European territories had none. His ability to do this comparative legal and historical work is evidence of his identity across two worlds, Europe and Africa.

“And here I cannot forbear suggesting what has long struck me very forcibly, namely, the strong analogy which even by this sketch, imperfect as it is, appears to prevail in the manners and customs of my countrymen and those of the Jews, before they reached the Land of Promise, and particularly the patriarchs while they were yet in that pastoral state which is described in Genesis—an analogy, which alone would induce me to think that the one people had sprung from the other. Indeed, this is the opinion of Dr. Gill, who, in his commentary on Genesis, very ably deduces the pedigree of the Africans from Afer and Afra, the descendants of Abraham by Keturah his wife and concubine.”

Equiano’s voice is erudite, most particularly in his use of the reference to Gill. His use of this scholarship is likely an effort to help his readers to see African people not as outsiders but as people who have connections to the Biblical history that many would have accepted. His effort here is to counter the othering that regularly occurred when it came to the cultures and identities of non-Europeans.

“Does not slavery itself depress the mind, and extinguish all its fire and every noble sentiment? But, above all, what advantages do not a refined people possess over those who are rude and uncultivated. Let the polished and haughty European recollect that his ancestors were once, like the Africans, uncivilized, and even barbarous. Did Nature make them inferior to their sons? and should they too have been made slaves? Every rational mind answers, No.”

For people who accepted common Enlightenment notions of how the world was ordered, what distinguished humans from beasts was reason. A common slur against people of color was that they were incapable of reason, which served as justification for subordinating them to white people. Equiano’s chiding of Europeans for assuming enslaved people in their midst are brutes by nature is a direct counterargument to this position. While earlier in this chapter Equiano writes people of color into the history of antiquity in the Bible, he makes a parallel move here to label early Europeans as uncivilized. This kind of reversal of the usual representations of Europeans and Africans appears throughout the narrative and is one of the ways Equiano takes Europeans to task for allowing slavery to continue.

“But alas! we were soon deprived of even the small comfort of weeping together. The next day proved a day of greater sorrow than I had yet experienced; for my sister and I were then separated, while we lay clasped in each other’s arms. It was in vain that we besought them not to part us; she was torn from me, and immediately carried away, while I was left in a state of distraction not to be described. I cried and grieved continually; and for several days I did not eat anything but what they forced into my mouth.”

While there are moments when there is some tension between Equiano’s desire to tell his own story and provide testimony about the evils of slavery, this episode puts those purposes in perfect alignment. The heart-rending scene allows Equiano to highlight the individual emotional toll of the destruction of family relationships by slavery and the cruelty implicit in a system that allows such scenes to occur with regularity.

“Yes, thou dear partner of all my childish sports! thou sharer of my joys and sorrows! happy should I have ever esteemed myself to encounter every misery for you, and to procure your freedom by the sacrifice of my own. Though you were early forced from my arms, your image has been always rivetted in my heart, from which neither time nor fortune have been able to remove it; so that, while the thoughts of your sufferings have damped my prosperity, they have mingled with adversity and increased its bitterness. To that Heaven which protects the weak from the strong, I commit the care of your innocence and virtues, if they have not already received their full reward, and if your youth and delicacy have not long since fallen victims to the violence of the African trader, the pestilential stench of a Guinea ship, the seasoning in the European colonies, or the lash and lust of a brutal and unrelenting overseer.”

This direct address to Equiano’s sister has elevated, emotionally charged language that is designed to dramatize the emotional toll of slavery. This kind of direct address to people who cannot actually hear or respond to the address is an apostrophe, a statement that is designed to be overheard by an audience that will be moved by what it hears. Equiano uses apostrophe throughout the narrative to persuade his readers using emotional appeals.

“All the nations and people I had hitherto passed through resembled our own in their manners, customs, and language: but I came at length to a country, the inhabitants of which differed from us in all those particulars. I was very much struck with this difference, especially when I came among a people who did not circumcise, and ate without washing their hands.”

Equiano is here recounting how his movement from the interior of the continent to the coast brought him to increasingly unfamiliar territory. This movement from the familiar to the strange is typical of narratives of exploration, but this account is a reversal because it shows that journey from the perspective of a person native to grounds outside of Europe. The focus on representing the perspective of a person from inside of a non-European culture is part of the source of Equiano’s authority. In Equiano’s case, the more he travels and the stranger his surroundings are, the more he is alienated from the African parts of his identity. This account also shows that the process of becoming enslaved begins long before the Middle Passage. It begins as soon as the enslaved person enters the feeder routes to the trade. This information offers an important insight into the psychological and economic reality of slavery.

“Thus I continued to travel, sometimes by land, sometimes by water, through different countries and various nations, till, at the end of six or seven months after I had been kidnapped, I arrived at the sea coast. It would be tedious and uninteresting to relate all the incidents which befell me during this journey, and which I have not yet forgotten; of the various hands I passed through, and the manners and customs of all the different people among whom I lived: I shall therefore only observe, that in all the places where I was the soil was exceedingly rich; the pomkins, eadas, plantains, yams, etc. etc. were in great abundance, and of incredible size.”

Equiano acknowledges the tedium of the long journey to the interior to the Atlantic coast of West Africa. This acknowledgment of the danger of being “uninteresting” shows his desire to meet his readers’ expectations that he will offer them something novel to read; the demand that even the entrance into slavery be interesting shows the tension between needing to tell the story of becoming a slave but to do so by relying in part on the conventions of European travel narratives. The awkward shift from describing horrors to describing African fauna is particularly jarring here, showing that Equiano sometimes struggles to find genre conventions to tell this extraordinary story. The genres available to him have limitations for a person who wants to tell this kind of story.

“The first object which saluted my eyes when I arrived on the coast was the sea, and a slave ship, which was then riding at anchor, and waiting for its cargo. These filled me with astonishment, which was soon converted into terror when I was carried on board. I was immediately handled and tossed up to see if I were sound by some of the crew; and I was now persuaded that I had gotten into a world of bad spirits, and that they were going to kill me. Their complexions too differing so much from ours, their long hair, and the language they spoke, (which was very different from any I had ever heard) united to confirm me in this belief. Indeed such were the horrors of my views and fears at the moment, that, 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.”

The narrator in a typical European travel narrative is all eyes, observing strange details in lands unfamiliar to the reader. Interpreting these strange landscapes shores up the authority of the writer and presents non-European cultures, people, and landscapes as stuff to be consumed by Europeans. Equiano reverses that system of representation. Europeans are the strangers here, and their treatment of him shows them to be uncivilized and cruel monsters based on the system of morality that the young Equiano has been taught from birth. This moment when Equiano formally enters the transatlantic slave trade distinguishes his text from most of those in this body of literature. This passage alone makes The Interesting Narrative a key text in the literature of slavery.

“[B]ut now that the whole ship’s cargo were confined together, it became absolutely pestilential. The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us. This produced copious perspirations, so that the air soon became unfit for respiration, from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died, thus falling victims to the improvident avarice, as I may call it, of their purchasers. This wretched situation was again aggravated by the galling of the chains, now become insupportable; and the filth of the necessary tubs, into which the children often fell, and were almost suffocated. The shrieks of the women, and the groans of the dying, rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable.”

Equiano describes the hold of the slave ship in visceral detail, allowing him to capture the terrifying reality of it for enslaved people. This scene is one of the important horrors of slavery that slave narratives seek to document. While accounts of these conditions appear in texts created by those engaged in this trade, it is rare to see the Middle Passage from the perspective of those who managed to survive it. Including it here allows Equiano to intervene in the representation of the slave trade as just a series of commercial transactions.

“In this situation I expected every hour to share the fate of my companions, some of whom were almost daily brought upon deck at the point of death, which I began to hope would soon put an end to my miseries. Often did I think many of the inhabitants of the deep much more happy than myself. I envied them the freedom they enjoyed, and as often wished I could change my condition for theirs. Every circumstance I met with served only to render my state more painful, and heighten my apprehensions, and my opinion of the cruelty of the whites.”

Equiano recounts how he envied those in the “deep,” either a reference to people who died quickly in the hold of the ship or those who jumped to their deaths rather than bear the terror of slavery. His description references a reality of slavery—the high mortality rates among enslaved people. These details help communicate how abject a situation enslaved people found themselves in once they entered the Middle Passage. The extraordinary nature of these experiences as well as the complicity of white people in it are compelling evidence for the corrupting nature of slavery.

“However two of the wretches were drowned, but they got the other, and afterwards flogged him unmercifully for thus attempting to prefer death to slavery. In this manner we continued to undergo more hardships than I can now relate, hardships which are inseparable from this accursed trade. Many a time we were near suffocation from the want of fresh air, which we were often without for whole days together. This, and the stench of the necessary tubs, carried off many. During our passage I first saw flying fishes, which surprised me very much: they used frequently to fly across the ship, and many of them fell on the deck. I also now first saw the use of the quadrant; I had often with astonishment seen the mariners make observations with it, and I could not think what it meant.”

This passage includes a jarring contrast between Equiano’s description of the slave trade and the strange sights he sees along his journey across the Atlantic. The suicide of captives is evidence of the terrible conditions under which captives as well as acts of resistance, while the description of the fishes is an example of Equiano using a sense of wonder to entice readers to keep reading. Finding the words to tell his story using the conventions of multiple narratives is a challenging task, and this passage puts it on full display. The inclusion of these suicides intervenes in the representation of slavery by showing one form of resistance to it.

“While I was on board this ship, my captain and master named me Gustavus Vassa. I at that time began to understand him a little, and refused to be called so, and told him as well as I could that I would be called Jacob; but he said I should not, and still called me Gustavus; and when I refused to answer to my new name, which at first I did, it gained me many a cuff; so at length I submitted, and was obliged to bear the present name, by which I have been known ever since.”

Part of the process of becoming enslaved was psychological. Equiano includes the story of the struggle over his name to show how stripping him of his name made him acknowledge internally that he was enslaved, so much so that he still bears the name even after emancipation. This moment captures the reality that enslaving a person involves stripping them of markers of social identity such as names.

“It was now between two and three years since I first came to England, a great part of which I had spent at sea; so that I became inured to that service, and began to consider myself as happily situated; for my master treated me always extremely well; and my attachment and gratitude to him were very great. From the various scenes I had beheld on shipboard, I soon grew a stranger to terror of every kind, and was, in that respect at least, almost an Englishman.”

Equiano links his freedom of movement while at sea to his discovery of a place for himself in what had been a strange new world among the English. His account of how these experiences shaped his identity reflects the significance of the Black Atlantic to his identity. His self-identification as “almost an Englishman”—but not a complete Englishman—highlights his sense of being an other is never completely far from his mind as he moves through this space.

“My imagination was all rapture as I flew to the Register Office, and, in this respect, like the apostle Peter, (whose deliverance from prison was so sudden and extraordinary, that he thought he was in a vision) I could scarcely believe I was awake. Heavens! who could do justice to my feelings at this moment! Not conquering heroes themselves, in the midst of a triumph—Not the tender mother who has just regained her long-lost infant, and presses it to her heart—Not the weary hungry mariner, at the sight of the desired friendly port—Not the lover, when he once more embraces his beloved mistress, after she had been ravished from his arms!—All within my breast was tumult, wildness, and delirium! My feet scarcely touched the ground, for they were winged with joy, and, like Elijah, as he rose to Heaven, they ‘were with lightning sped as I went on.’ Everyone I met I told of my happiness, and blazed about the virtue of my amiable master and captain.”

The Interesting Narrative is a foundational text in the genre of the slave narrative. This passage in which Equiano recounts achieving his freedom is one of the key genre conventions of the slave narrative. This passage is also interesting because of where Equiano has to go to find the language to express his ecstasy over achieving freedom—the Bible. These scriptures are not only references to the increasing importance of faith to Equiano but also highlight how the narratives of ex-slaves rely on the conventions of religious conversion narratives to make their stories more familiar to their audiences. The passage also includes emotional language that captures the psychological reality of achieving freedom.

“With a light heart I bade Montserrat farewell, and never had my feet on it since; and with it I bade adieu to the sound of the cruel whip, and all other dreadful instruments of torture; adieu to the offensive sight of the violated chastity of the sable females, which has too often accosted my eyes; adieu to oppressions (although to me less severe than most of my countrymen); and adieu to the angry howling, dashing surfs. I wished for a grateful and thankful heart to praise the Lord God on high for all his mercies!”

Although Equiano was emancipated several years before, he was not able to leave the West Indies for four years because of the obligation he feels to his former owner and because he is not always able to defend his right to free movement as a formerly enslaved person. His description of what he feels on leaving Montserrat shows that the process of becoming free is not just one physical step. Leaving behind Montserrat and Mr. King shows his greater control over his physical movement and the necessity of living on other grounds in order to put space between himself and the psychological toll of slavery.

“Thus ended our Arctic voyage, to the no small joy of all on board, after having been absent four months; in which time, at the imminent hazard of our lives, we explored nearly as far towards the Pole as 81 degrees north, and 20 degrees east longitude; being much farther, by all accounts, than any navigator had ever ventured before; in which we fully proved the impracticability of finding a passage that way to India.”

Equiano pushes his newly gained control over his movements by participating in a European expedition to conquer and discover new lands. The expedition to the Arctic was an important historic event in European exploration and trade. By including a chapter on his role in it, Equiano represents the European part of his identity and shows that people of color can participate in the making of Europe.