Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Olaudah
I was especially interested in the story of Olaudah Equiano. It amazes me that he was treated so well when the other stories I've heard include slaves being treated harshly and not given the advantages of non-slaves. I also find it strange that in a family that owned slaves (Olaudah's father), members of said family were slaves themselves. Olaudah's kidnapping interests me because after this point, we do not hear of his sister again. What happened to his sister? Was she treated similarly to Olaudah? Were the two ever reunited? I am also confused because when he refused to eat, he was beaten, but because he was so thin from not eating, he was not sold and had to be shipped to Virginia (from Barbados). So he is scolded, and then indirectly rewarded (by not being sold) for the same crime? Olaudah became friends with different officers and with this trust, different people taught him to read and write - an opportunity rarely given to slaves. What made him so different that people were willing to treat him that way? I feel like Olaudah's story is too good to be true and I would like to know more about his life as well as other slaves who were treated with such generosity.
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2 comments:
I totally agree with you! At times I felt so bad for Olaudah because his life sounded so tranquil before the slave raiders kidnapped him and his sister. But some other times I found a lot of the good things that happened to him hard to believe. Why were some people willing to teach him how to read and write? And how did he know so much about trading and how to make money at such a young age? Despite the many questions that came up after reading this chapter, his descriptions offered valuable insight into the life of a slave, even if it was uncommon at times.
I do agree that Olaudah was treated alot better than many other slaves but don't get too hyperbolic..lol..He was treated horribly. Even though he became a well known slave, people taught him to read and write, and he was offered opportunities that many other slaves weren't, he was still merely a slave. He was not a man and he still had to wake up every morning and answer to his master or he'd be punished. Olaudah was still in bondage, even until the day he died.
At the end of Chapter Two, Hochschild states that Olaudah Eqiano was caputred again and he barely escaped this time. Hochschild make a great point when stating that "as long as the British Empire permitted slavery, no black person in it could be free. Maybe it's easy for me or you to say that his "life sounded so tranquil" but until we have to live in fear like many blacks in London did for years, we musn't make judgements on how tranquil a slaves' life was.
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