In going through Brychan Carey’s table outlining the arguments for and against Equiano’s birth place one is compelled to realize the small differences between the two sides and the impact it could have on the historical portrayal of this unique person. After reading through The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano I do not feel that there is anything challenging about the descriptions he portrays as an adult. The most notable item that makes me question if he truly was from Africa or was in fact born in America as Vincent Carretta asserts, is his description of his initial capture. In being taken from his home along with his sister Equiano states that once they had reached a great distance from their home, “We were then unbound, but were unable to take any food; and, being quite overpowered by fatigue and grief, our only relief was some sleep, which allayed our misfortune for a short time.”[1] Taking into account that he is still a young boy at this time, it strikes me as odd that being in his own words as “trained up from my earliest years in the art of war,”[2] that his fight or flight instincts wouldn’t kick in and he would make any effort to escape. Being a young man in a culture as such, this seems as it would be the only response that one would have taken given the fact that they were unrestrained. He knew the idea of slavery and how it manifested itself within their African culture, and with this knowledge and the fact that he was still within one day’s distance of his home he makes no attempt to secure his freedom, in my mind casts doubts as Africa being his place of birth. Being as this was written at a time when abolition was a central theme, it seems to me that Equiano would have many narratives to draw from in his travels so he had an understanding of the African culture and middle passage. Even then the story of a young free boy being pulled from his home would have a much greater psychological effect on a reader that that of a boy being born in the south that rose above his enslaved beginnings to one day know the taste of freedom.
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