Ishmael
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Nov 24, 2001
- Posts
- 84,005
Separate but equal.
- Thread starter Ishmael
- Start date
RobDownSouth
Trump Is Dying
- Joined
- Apr 13, 2002
- Posts
- 81,049
One of your most cherished lifetime goals would appear to have been achieved.
Now if only President Trump builds his wall, you can die a happy man.
Now if only President Trump builds his wall, you can die a happy man.
BotanyBoy
Fuck Your Safe Space
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2012
- Posts
- 52,256
At super ultra hyper liberal Democrat dominated University of California no less...LMFAo
Of course segregation and racist policy is always, ALWAYS ok as long as liberal (D) is doing it.
It was Hillary Clintons wall first
another fine example of liberal (D) xenophobia and racism made ok by the (D) in front of her name.
Last edited:
BoyNextDoor
I hate liars
- Joined
- Apr 19, 2010
- Posts
- 14,159
BND's thoughts on the Middle Passage after reading Equiano:
Seeing the Middle Passage, the forced journey made by between ten and fifteen million African people from the West African coast to the Americas, through the eyes of Olaudah Equiano left me with one clear and poignant thought: Make it stop! Therefore, I have to believe that Olaudah Equiano’s main objective in writing his biography was to urge his contemporaries by opening their eyes to the realities of slavery and the slave trade to not only feel the same urge to make it stop but to take action and end the slave trade.
Equiano’s method is as simple in concept as it must have been as difficult to achieve in his day and time in history. He clearly seeks to make himself just as real and human as any of his readers, to his readers who were his 18th-century British contemporaries. He takes them through his journey as if it were their own. As if they were the ones who were stolen from their families, lost everything that they knew of the world, were cast into a such a foreignness that it seems like they were surrounded by spirits and magic and were bound into a servitude that was so evidently cruel and inhuman that the reader would be able to do nothing other than abhor it and call for its undoing.
Towards the end for the first chapter, which I would characterize as a setting a very interesting context for his early experiences and the customs and mannerisms of his people in a culture not at all savage but rather “almost a nation of dancers, musicians and poets”, Equiano makes it clear that his people believe in one Creator. He also discusses cultural practices of circumcision, computing the year by knowing the path and annual cycles of the sun and is very deliberate in discussing the cleanliness of his people and the role that religion played in enforcing that custom. All of these beliefs and practices are very close, to the point of being almost indistinguishable from, the cultural patters of his 18-century British readers. He also very intricately weaves in the story of the Portuguese settlement of Mitomba in his discussion about how climate impacts the complexion of all people culminating in his assertion:
Surely the minds of the Spaniards did not change with their complexions! Are there not causes enough to which the apparent inferiority of an African may be ascribed, without limiting the goodness of God, and supposing he forbore to stamp understanding on certainly his own image, because “carved in ebony”. Might it not be naturally ascribed to their situation?
I have to believe that this compelling opening to Equiano’s narrative had the effect of making himself just as real and human as any of his readers. Especially as he continues:
Let the polished and haughty European recollect that his ancestors were once, like the Africans, uncivilized, and even barbarous. Did Nature make them inferior to their sons? And should they too have been made slaves? Every rational mind answers, No.
And here Equiano makes himself just as real to his readers, puts them in his own shoes so to speak, and by doing so forces them (hopefully) to the rational conclusion that if Europeans should not be cast into slavery, no people should be.
The next really compelling part of the narrative comes for me during the recounting of the first experiences at sea and the feeling among the captured slaves that they were surrounded by magic and spirits. That masts and rigging and sail were a mystery and the motion and stopping of the ships could only be explained by “the white men had some spell or magic they put in the water”. To an 18th-century British reader I think this passage really forcefully drives home the utter foreignness of their world to an inland born West African that their commonplace technology could seem so unnatural as to be magic. I was reminded of scientist and science fiction author Arthur C. Clark’s “Third Law” in which he states that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. And I think here that Equiano must have effectively demonstrated the utter foreignness of their world to his readers and made them feel, themselves, like a stranger in a strange land.
Another part of the narrative that stayed with me and really served to communicate the harshness and cruelty inflicted upon the slaves, even if this is only one of a very many, was when the ship was anchored off Bridge Town and they were brought to the slave traders. Equiano in the midst of the telling of the strangeness of the new sights of the horses and multiple story dwellings comes at last to the horror of the trade in human flesh. The enthusiasm and fervor with which the slavers rush in to carryout out their business without any qualms or moral compunction is simply made real by the reading. But if that alone were not compelling enough Equiano returns to a theme that ran all throughout the Black Atlantic and even what John Hope Franklin and others in our readings and materials talked about, that the destruction of the relationships between people was horrific:
Are the dearest friends and relations, now rendered more dear by their separation from their kindred, still to be parted from each other, and thus prevented from cheering the gloom of slavery with the small comfort of being together and mingling their comfort and sorrows? Why are parents to lose their children, bothers their sisters, or husbands their wives? Surely this is a new refinement in cruelty, which, while it has not advantage to atone for it, thus aggravates distress, and adds fresh horrors even to the wretchedness of slavery.
I added the emphasis to the last sentence because I think it is here that Equiano must have really captured his 18th-century British reader in these particular passages. When you think of the “Lords and Gentlemen” to whom this narrative was addressed and their world of titles and genealogy and heritage and inheritance it must have seemed a refinement in cruelty to completely divorce a human from their social context in this manner, and as I have stated in the discussions it also hits home for me personally as well.
In conclusion I do believe that Equiano clearly seeks to make himself just as real and human as any of his readers, to his readers, by calling upon the things he experienced in such a way as to demonstrate that there really is no difference between the 18th-century British reader and the captured and West African people that would cause there to be any basis for them to be enslaved and for his reader to call for the end of the slave trade and slavery. I believe he was very successful. The British Slave Trade Act passed in 1807 and I have to believe after reading this narrative that it had no small part in moving the hearts and minds of the British Parliament, and people, in its passage.
Seeing the Middle Passage, the forced journey made by between ten and fifteen million African people from the West African coast to the Americas, through the eyes of Olaudah Equiano left me with one clear and poignant thought: Make it stop! Therefore, I have to believe that Olaudah Equiano’s main objective in writing his biography was to urge his contemporaries by opening their eyes to the realities of slavery and the slave trade to not only feel the same urge to make it stop but to take action and end the slave trade.
Equiano’s method is as simple in concept as it must have been as difficult to achieve in his day and time in history. He clearly seeks to make himself just as real and human as any of his readers, to his readers who were his 18th-century British contemporaries. He takes them through his journey as if it were their own. As if they were the ones who were stolen from their families, lost everything that they knew of the world, were cast into a such a foreignness that it seems like they were surrounded by spirits and magic and were bound into a servitude that was so evidently cruel and inhuman that the reader would be able to do nothing other than abhor it and call for its undoing.
Towards the end for the first chapter, which I would characterize as a setting a very interesting context for his early experiences and the customs and mannerisms of his people in a culture not at all savage but rather “almost a nation of dancers, musicians and poets”, Equiano makes it clear that his people believe in one Creator. He also discusses cultural practices of circumcision, computing the year by knowing the path and annual cycles of the sun and is very deliberate in discussing the cleanliness of his people and the role that religion played in enforcing that custom. All of these beliefs and practices are very close, to the point of being almost indistinguishable from, the cultural patters of his 18-century British readers. He also very intricately weaves in the story of the Portuguese settlement of Mitomba in his discussion about how climate impacts the complexion of all people culminating in his assertion:
Surely the minds of the Spaniards did not change with their complexions! Are there not causes enough to which the apparent inferiority of an African may be ascribed, without limiting the goodness of God, and supposing he forbore to stamp understanding on certainly his own image, because “carved in ebony”. Might it not be naturally ascribed to their situation?
I have to believe that this compelling opening to Equiano’s narrative had the effect of making himself just as real and human as any of his readers. Especially as he continues:
Let the polished and haughty European recollect that his ancestors were once, like the Africans, uncivilized, and even barbarous. Did Nature make them inferior to their sons? And should they too have been made slaves? Every rational mind answers, No.
And here Equiano makes himself just as real to his readers, puts them in his own shoes so to speak, and by doing so forces them (hopefully) to the rational conclusion that if Europeans should not be cast into slavery, no people should be.
The next really compelling part of the narrative comes for me during the recounting of the first experiences at sea and the feeling among the captured slaves that they were surrounded by magic and spirits. That masts and rigging and sail were a mystery and the motion and stopping of the ships could only be explained by “the white men had some spell or magic they put in the water”. To an 18th-century British reader I think this passage really forcefully drives home the utter foreignness of their world to an inland born West African that their commonplace technology could seem so unnatural as to be magic. I was reminded of scientist and science fiction author Arthur C. Clark’s “Third Law” in which he states that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. And I think here that Equiano must have effectively demonstrated the utter foreignness of their world to his readers and made them feel, themselves, like a stranger in a strange land.
Another part of the narrative that stayed with me and really served to communicate the harshness and cruelty inflicted upon the slaves, even if this is only one of a very many, was when the ship was anchored off Bridge Town and they were brought to the slave traders. Equiano in the midst of the telling of the strangeness of the new sights of the horses and multiple story dwellings comes at last to the horror of the trade in human flesh. The enthusiasm and fervor with which the slavers rush in to carryout out their business without any qualms or moral compunction is simply made real by the reading. But if that alone were not compelling enough Equiano returns to a theme that ran all throughout the Black Atlantic and even what John Hope Franklin and others in our readings and materials talked about, that the destruction of the relationships between people was horrific:
Are the dearest friends and relations, now rendered more dear by their separation from their kindred, still to be parted from each other, and thus prevented from cheering the gloom of slavery with the small comfort of being together and mingling their comfort and sorrows? Why are parents to lose their children, bothers their sisters, or husbands their wives? Surely this is a new refinement in cruelty, which, while it has not advantage to atone for it, thus aggravates distress, and adds fresh horrors even to the wretchedness of slavery.
I added the emphasis to the last sentence because I think it is here that Equiano must have really captured his 18th-century British reader in these particular passages. When you think of the “Lords and Gentlemen” to whom this narrative was addressed and their world of titles and genealogy and heritage and inheritance it must have seemed a refinement in cruelty to completely divorce a human from their social context in this manner, and as I have stated in the discussions it also hits home for me personally as well.
In conclusion I do believe that Equiano clearly seeks to make himself just as real and human as any of his readers, to his readers, by calling upon the things he experienced in such a way as to demonstrate that there really is no difference between the 18th-century British reader and the captured and West African people that would cause there to be any basis for them to be enslaved and for his reader to call for the end of the slave trade and slavery. I believe he was very successful. The British Slave Trade Act passed in 1807 and I have to believe after reading this narrative that it had no small part in moving the hearts and minds of the British Parliament, and people, in its passage.
