The pursue of a true identity, seeking your inner purpose, and how to achieve freedom no matter how far they seem to be from you – those are a few words that could describe the Olaudah Equiano’s autobiography, written in 1789. Within this search for freedom and self-discovery he adapts to a completely new lifestyle, and delves into a complete set of new beliefs of life in general – he becomes an Englishmen in manners and mentality, and becomes a Christian. And throughout his real identity pursuit he encounters many obstacles, but mainly the ones of surviving the horrors of slavery, and becoming a free black man in London.
Olaudah Equiano was an African man that lived in the Western part of Africa. The tribe in which Equiano lived was in modern day Nigeria, and it could be considered more civilized than the others of the area due to their manners. His family held a high position in the tribe hierarchy, and Equiano’s father was the chief of the tribe. Equiano’s tribe had their own beliefs and culture – they were circumcised, they washed their hands after funerals to prevent spirits to get in their houses, they were polygamist, and were extremely superstitious (belief in spirits, rituals, and offerings to the spirits).
At the time he lived in Africa, slavery was at its peak, and they would constantly hide and run from other Africans that wanted to kidnap people from tribes to insert them into slavery, and that occurred to Equiano himself. He was captured in his tribe, along with his sister. At first, he was enslaved by African families, in which treated him well, almost as part of his family, a kind of domestic servitude with a certain kinship of that family towards him. As the book goes on, he goes from family to family until he reaches the coast and is sent to England.
Equiano was terrified with this experience of leaving his home country and his people. He felt scared and in the midst of white men, something he had never seen before, he strongly believed that they were unwell spirits that would eat him. Equiano was at this time very young, but he understood the concept of slavery, in which he disagreed and did not fully comprehend why slavery was taking place, and he took it as an unfair thing to do to his countrymen – “Is it not enough that we are torn from our country and friends to toil for your luxury and lust of gain? Must every tender feeling be likewise sacrificed to your avarice? 28). ”
He saw the Englishmen as cruel people that traded Africans in order to satisfy their needs and luxury of getting the work done without spoiling their hands. After a while of Equiano’s living in England and a few trips with his master Pascal, he was named differently than his African name – his name was Gustavus Vasa (and even before this name another master had named him Jacob). Equiano would not give up his African identity at first, (“I at that time began to understand him a little, and refused to be called so […] and when I refused to answer to my new name, which at first I did, it gained me many a cuff (31).
However, after a while, he started to give in, as he saw himself in London, a place filled with wonders and cultural richness. Equiano adapted himself quite well to the nature of the British, as he no longer saw them as spirits; it was quite the opposite, he now was quite interested in their culture, and how they coexisted with each other with organization, politeness, and manners, “[…] I grew a stranger to terror of every kind, and was, in that respect at least, almost an Englishmen. …] I now not only felt myself quite easy with these new countrymen but also relished their society and manners. I no longer looked upon them as spirits, but as men superior to us, and therefore I had the stronger desire to resemble them, to imbibe their spirit and imitate their manners. (38).
Equiano at this point considered himself an African that envied the British culture, a natural and healthy envying, because all he cared now was to become one of them, superior as his original and now fading African identity, and part of it came with the acquaintance of Christianity. He was baptized in February of 1759, as he learned about the Bible, Heaven and Hell, and the so called Providence – the Calvinist ideal in which it is predetermined whether you go to Heaven or Hell; however, the only way to reach Heaven is to be baptized, and so he did.
Equiano now was a slave that understood English, and with his friend Richard Baker, of whom he became very fond of, he learned more and more of the British culture, and how to make himself more alike of the Englishmen – he came to the sense that the British were happier people due to their culture enrichment, and due to their God “[…] and from what I could understand by him of this God, and in seeing these white people did not sell one another as we did, I was much pleased; and in this I thought they were much happier than we Africans (34). Consequently of Equiano’s knowledge of Christianity and fondness of the British culture, came his new identity: a born African man was now in mind and soul a British – the black Christian, which is completely connected to the European way of thinking. He now had the same beliefs as they had, he acted like they did (as much as he could because he was still a slave), and did everything in his power to look like one of them. Race to him was simply his color, in which was unalterable, but his beliefs and thinking was of a true Englishmen.
Specifically, in the chapter where he finds himself in terrible danger due to the naval war he was in, he proves himself a true Christian – a belief he had adapted and learned in England but did not apply until the occasion in which he gave his life unto God’s hands, and let himself choose the fate that Equiano deserved, as he said “[…] immediately afterwards I thought this caution was fruitless, and cheering myself with the reflection that there was a time allotted for me to die as well as to be born, I instantly cast off all my fear or thought of whatever of death and went through the whole of my duty with alacrity (74). This proves how deeply the Christian roots were inside of Equiano, and with it, the hope of one day being accepted as one of them – the English. Undoubtedly, his mentality was set towards his identity – for being accepted as a Christian, he also wanted to be part of the English people, and religion was just part of it. In the book it was being focused as how Equiano consequently to his kidnapping and living in England, thought of himself as a perfect fit to the English manners and culture, and for this he was willing to do anything to be one of them – he adopted their religion, language, thinking and even way of dressing.
Religion and Identity are correlated in this situation due to the events’ occurrence in the narrative, and how one thing leads to the other – he was then considered the Black Christian, the perfect example of a hybrid identity nickname. Equiano then leaves England and takes innumerous trips to the West Indies, the Arctic, Jamaica, all over Europe and to the American Colonies, specially, where he spent a lot of time. Even though his “heart was still fixed on London (89),” he kept praying and working in various places – until he found the solution of going back to his beloved country.
Being a free slave would be the pass to his happiness and return to England, and that is what he aims for the other half of the book – obtain his freedom by trading goods wherever he goes, and after a certain amount of trading and obtaining enough gold he would buy his freedom certificate from his master, which he did for approximately forty pounds. Now, the upshot of this search for freedom was the entrepreneurial spirit he built on his quest; how he had his own knowledge of trading; what goods each country or state liked; where he would achieve more profit, and how he could make money faster to then be free.
However, this freedom would be only earned if destined by God, as he believes, “I was from early years a predestinarian, I thought whatever fate had determined must ever come to pass, and therefore if ever it were my lot to be freed nothing could prevent me […] I therefore looked up with prayers anxiously to God for my liberty (74). ” Altogether, Equiano then became a free man after much trading in the American colonies, the Caribbean Islands, and Europe. That brought not only his physical freedom, but also his mental freedom towards a general thinking of liberty and equality to all men.
Christianity and his quest for independence (freedom of slavery for himself, and hope that one day Africans would not be enslaved anymore) were interconnected because the Christian values taught to him were an essential key to his argument against slavery, and how it goes against the human rights that every single man and woman deserve; and the European society were also the ones that imposed slavery to be a mistake; so, all his knowledge and education contributed for him to fight against slavery, in general and his own, by honest means.
He thought that slaves could be honest and more efficient “[…] by changing your conduct and treating your slaves as men every cause of fear would be banished. They would be faithful, honest, intelligent, and vigorous; and peace, prosperity, and happiness, would attend you (66). ” All things considered, Equiano found himself in the English culture and from there he became an activist towards abolition of slavery, and by achieving his own freedom he fought for equality in possible ways. In 1792, he married to an English woman, and became a solid member of the British community – a true Englishmen.
He considers himself one of them saying that he “[hopes] to have the satisfaction of seeing the renovation of liberty and justice resting on the British government, to vindicate the honour of our common nature (143). ” He, defines the conclusion to his own story as an accomplishment by pursuing his own happiness in London, and going through all he did to achieve it; he ended up having the life he wanted. He became a European thinker, inspired by Christian beliefs and modern day man logics – his slavery thoughts were of cruelty, and how it should be abolished.
Bringing a further reason to believe that the African country should become a high powered nation by its amount of natural resources and trading leverage; also, he believed in a way to evangelize Africa, and with this knowledge make slavery a common mistake among humans, for making it clear to all Europeans and nations in general the knowledge that making a Christian slave of another goes against the will of God – in a certain way, he was seeking a way to make all Africans part of the European culture by assimilating them into it, as much as he did – and with all that he would then make Africa a country with full potential of being part of the world trading and economical system; sadly, it never happened. One thing remains clear with Equiano’s thinking of slavery abolition, slavery became illegal and is nowadays a crime against humanity, for all we know “this traffic cannot be good […] which violates that first natural right of mankind, equality and independency (66),” and it shall remain like this as long as we know each other as rational human beings.
