Olaudah Equiano was a slave during the eighteenth-century. Eventually, he gained his freedom in 1766. Afterwards, he wrote his autobiography and published it in 1789. According to Equiano, he was born in Nigeria and, during his teens, he was sold into slavery (Sources of The Making of the West, 338). What makes Equiano unique is that he tells his own perspective on slavery through his own experiences while enslaved. Additionally, what’s interesting was how much he could recount from his earlier days in slavery. In great detail, he describes his earliest days as a slave: how his captors looked, how the ship smelled, the food and drink given to him, and many more. The amount of detail put into his autobiography was impressive to say the least, however, it prompts the question, was he truly on the ship? Or was it only a recollection and combination of stories told from one…show more content… Different, because Equiano was born an actual slave, while Astell was never born a slave. Although having different stations in life, both felt and were treated like a slave. Due to this dislike of their treatment, both Equiano’s and Astell’s writing reflected their disdain, however, their styles differed. In Equiano's text, he appeals to his audience by evoking pity from them. He uses, as he claims, his own harsh personal experiences of being a slave, to solicit pity from the readers. By giving descriptions of what kind of environment his people were put through, he implores the people to ask how any true believer in God can subject another man through what they were going through. In Astell’s texts, she uses logic and comparison to various elements of the government to describe the state of women in society and in marriage, suggesting its illogical basis. She describes in her text the flaw in arguing that women should be under the power of a man, when those same men regard a government ruled by an absolute sovereignty with
