Kelley Sanford

AML 3613-0M01
August 28, 2014
Assignment #1
Equianos Experience with the White Man through Violence
Olaudah Equiano is nearly murdered by one Doctor Perkins who, not liking to see any
strange negroes in his yard, he and a ruffian of a white manbeset me in an instantthough I
gave a good account of myself, and he knew my captain, who lodged hard by him, it was to no
purpose. They beat and mangled me in a shameful manner, leaving me near dead (Equiano
269). Critic Paul Edwards observes that Equiano was constantly reminded that the black man
was subject to the whims and arbitrary violence of a white slave owning society (Edwards
192). However, what is most significant about this incident is that Equiano attempted to gain
mercy through his relation to his master and later, that master actually sees to Equianos care and
tries to avenge him. Edwards ponders If slavery is evilhow should (Equiano) respond to what
the world would call a good master? The very white men who aid and befriend him, in fact, are
also playing their part in the appalling system which has enslaved and brutalized him and his
people (192). In a similar point, Henry Gates calls Booker T. Washingtons claims that his
owners were not especially cruel curiously compromising and demeaning parenthetical
explanations (Gates xiii). Gates and Edwards would agree that the slave can struggle with
separating the violence of physical abuse and the violence of asserted superiority within their
experience of oppression, which is the theme of this specific violent incident that overarches
Equianos entire first volume.
Word count: 250

Works Cited
Davis, Charles T., and Gates, Henry Louis. Introduction. The Slaves Narrative. New York,
Ny: Oxford University Press, 1955. xi-xxxiv. Print.
Edwards, Paul. Three West African Writers of the 1780s. The Slaves Narrative. Davis,
Charles T., and Gates, Henry Louis. New York, Ny: Oxford University Press, 1955. 17598. Print.
Equiano, Olaudah. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa,
the African.Written by Himself. Vol. I. London: G. Vassa, March 1789. Documenting the
American South. 2001. University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill. August 28, 2014 < http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/equiano1/equiano1.html#p227>.