Term Paper: The Horrors of a Slave Ship

Term Paper: The Horrors of a Slave Ship
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Term Paper: The Horrors of a Slave Ship
The excerpt, The Horrors of a Slave Ship, gives an interesting and horrifying turn of events from a first-person perspective during an era characterized by the heightened slave trade. Olaudah Equiano, the protagonist and the narrator of the story, gives an account of events on how the slave trade rendered him, his sister, other Africans victims of a horrifying experience filled with pain, fears, isolation, and even death. According to Equiano, most African families had become aware of the kidnappers who would raid homes in search of commodities of the lucrative slave trade, and they had devised means to protect their families, especially the young ones from the kidnappers. One day, luck ran out of Equiano and his sister when the kidnappers raided their home, kidnapped, and run away with them as fast as they could into the thicket where they could not cry for help.
Equiano went ahead to narrate the harrowing experience he and his sister went through in the hands of the slave merchants as they traversed the continent from one place to the other, heading to the ultimate destination that is the coastal region, where slaves were sold to the white merchants. While still within the boundaries of the African continent, Equiano was at some point separated from his sister, sold from one master to the other, and traveled the land, sometimes by sea, from place to place. Owing to his young age, Equiano, who was barely eleven years old, could get the liberty of being carried by other slaves when he got exhausted from long-distance travel. One remarkable moment that Equiano recalled when he tried to escape after being threatened by a servant that she will report him to the master after killing a chicken. Equiano managed to escape into the thicket, and the search was all in vain. The thought of being bitten by snakes and the long way back home scared Equiano out of the woods and back to the master for apologies. At some point, Equiano got an opportunity to reunite with his sister, a moment that was cut short by the cruel and lusty slave trade merchants who hurriedly separated the two. Certainly, the thought of being separated from his bloodline unwillingly brought a lot of sorrow to Equiano.
The peak of the sorrowful experience, as narrated by Equiano, was when the slaves were to be exchanged to the highest bidders, the trans-Atlantic slave traders. Equiano recalled how he was tossed up in the air an...