Olaudah Equiano's Personal Slave Narrative

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In Equiano's personal slave narrative, "The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African", Equiano uses first person pronouns, rhetorical questions, and diction to flip the idea that the African people act backwards and barbaric. Equiano does so by demonstrating his personal exceptionalism through his literacy to show that truly the white people remain backwards and barbaric because of their hypocrisy. This contradiction that Equiano demonstrates in his slave narrative shows that the savagery of African people exists as a misconception and makes the reader fully grasp the need to abolish slavery and any inequality present since this perception of these people is based on a lie and not a truth. Initially, on page seventy-eight, …show more content…
Equiano describes the man who tried to attack him as a "depredator" (78), instantly describing this man in a negative way even before he tells of the attempted attack. By using the word 'depredator' as the first characterizing trait of this man, Equiano shows to his readers the predator quality of the white man; by characterizing the white man as the predator, Equiano changes the audience’s perception of these people, since people of the time considered the African people as the predator and therefore the ones acceptable for bondage and harsh treatment. Equiano goes on to describe this person as a "cruel man" (78) to demonstrate to the reader the white men's harshness towards those of color. By characterizing this man as cruel, Equiano references the wrongdoings brought onto the African people by the hand of the white man. Through his diction choices, Equiano characterizes the white men how they once characterized the African people- crude and ruthless; with this characterization, Equiano displays how the white man demonstrates inhuman traits through his predator qualities and that the people of color who endure the "cruel" (78) bias do not show these
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