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Olaudah Equiano’s ‘Interesting’ Route

p. 113-126

Résumé

Olaudah Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative is a classic in what is commonly defined in literary studies: ‘slave narratives’. This fascinating text has been studied to keep the memory of the slave trade alive, to show the horror of such a human trade, to emphasize the suffering of the greatest human displacement ever. The research perspectives have mainly targeted the knowledge of what life was like under slavery. Stories of slaves narrated from the inside are indeed of great importance to study such humiliating human experiences. As a slave, Olaudah Equiano has succeeded to free himself, not by escaping from his master but by buying his own self, thus becoming his own master. Literate, he has fought to abolish slavery and he has succeeded to live an integrated life among the British, marrying an Englishwoman, writing his memoirs. Olaudah Equiano has inspired many critical studies. These studies have been interested in looking into his spiritual quest as he has become a Christian Methodist. His new adopted religion has saved his soul, after a life without freedom. My proposition for the conference on transport will move away from this approach of Olaudah Equiano’s autobiography. I propose to revisit The Interesting Narrative by working on the literality of his text. My paper will therefore concentrate on the travels, forced or not, on what he has seen, what he has described in his narrative in terms of scenery and human relationships. I shall analyse the way he has described his ‘transports’ and portrayed the places he has seen, knowing that he has travelled extensively within the 18th century British Empire, from Africa to England to the West Indies, back to Africa then to Jamaïca, to America, but also to France and Spain. I shall study the narrative text in terms of style and power of evocation by relating the words used to the psychological situation of the described moment, enhancing thus the literary quality of the text, its power to convey such ‘particular’ trips. I shall investigate into the routes and the transport (s) he has taken, forced or desired. Through this approach, I shall analyse the fascinating route of a man who should have stayed in his mother country, Nigeria.


Texte intégral

1 The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa the African,1 was published in 1789, a symbolic year for a text which has become a reference in ‘slave narratives’. Olaudah Equiano provides first hand informative insights into the treatment of slaves,2 but also, as he recalls in his chronological autobiography, into the way Africans lived before he was captured and transported from hinterland to the Atlantic shores for long hauls. Olaudah’s fascinating text keeps the memory of past Africa alive, exposing at the same time the horror of slavery and the suffering of kidnapped Africans during the greatest human displacement ever. Slave stories narrated by slaves themselves are rare, which confers to The Interesting Narrative a particular significance when one investigates such a humiliating human drama. Olaudah Equiano’s life bears even more interest as he became his own master, acquiring the intellectual weapons to fight slavery and to be one of the eighteenth century Londonian Black writers, called ‘St Giles’s black birds’,3 with Ignatius Sancho and Ottobah Cugoano.4 Such an agitated long life needs to be revisited, which I propose to do through the perspective of transport and travel, retracing his transfers through lands and oceans, focusing on the ‘Middle Passage’. I shall look into his other fascinating ‘routes’ as a free man, stressing his power of evocation of the places he stopped in, which as I shall show, mirrors the disturbed psychology of a man who has never planned to leave his mother part of Africa ‘called Eboe’.5 The aim of this paper is to connect the physical displacement with the spiritual quest or ‘religious voyage’ of a man who never accepted the debasement of his humanity.

2When listing the different ways of travelling, Jacques Lacarrière includes the ‘forced civil travels undertaken by the exiled, the displaced, the deported’.6 Olaudah Equiano’s account of his travels within the 18th century British Empire enters this category. Born in 1745 in Essaka, which corresponds to today’s south Nigeria, Olaudah Equiano was kidnapped at the age of eleven and sold into slavery to a captain of the Royal Navy. This made him a ‘forced traveller’, a displaced person, taken from Africa to America and Europe. Throughout his autobiography, Olaudah Equiano describes the means which were used for his transport. He was first carried on the back of his smugglers to various houses situated in the forest, on the way to the coast, which indicates a precise sense of organisation. When far enough from his village, he was forced to walk on paths through forests and deserted areas, changing hands and masters, like ‘a hunted deer’. (50) He crossed places where hideous roarings of wild beasts were heard. He travelled in fear: ‘sometimes by land, sometimes by water through different countries’. (54) He recalls and describes some of these lands which were ‘exceedingly rich’. (54) Through this first hand report, we learn that the slave traders inland Africa were Africans, proving early that the slave trade could not reach such a wide scale without the contribution of Africans, qualified as greedy betrayers by African novelists such as Ayi Kwei Armah or Yambo Ouologuem,7 knowing also that ‘conditions were created by Europeans for the crudest act of trading in human beings and for ‘transporting’ captured and bought people across the Atlantic’.8 Indeed, along with other slaves from other parts of Africa, Equiano was transported chained to the Atlantic coast, where all of them ‘were all pent up together like so many sheep in a fold’. (60) Equiano was sold to White traders who were waiting on the Atlantic coast where he saw for the first time ‘a slave-ship which was riding at anchor, waiting for its cargo’. (55) Ships, vessels or sloops were Olaudah’s main means of transport from then on. This account provides frightful details on the way slaves were transported from the hinterland to the coast. The crossing of the Atlantic was even more devastating. The ‘Middle Passage’ is the worst period, that of the unknown, that of the uprooting, that of the worst human psychological disaster. Olaudah Equiano’s narrative is a first hand reference for that horrid part of human history which he describes and defines as a crime against humanity.9 His first encounter with white slave traders and their slave-ships is evoked with acute precision, giving to Olaudah Equiano’s memory a powerful sense of truth expressed through personal feelings:

When I was carried on board I was immediately handled, and tossed up... I was now persuaded that I had gotten into a world of bad spirits... The White’s complexions too differing from ours, their long hair, and the language they spoke, which was very different from any I have ever heard... When I looked round the ship and saw a large furnace of copper boiling, and a multitude of Black people of every description chained together, every one of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow, I no longer doubted of my fate, and quite overpowered with horror and anguish, I fell motionless on the deck and fainted. (55)

3He travelled as a slave to America, describing the ‘Middle Passage’ as the most cruel experience men could endure, denouncing the ‘White people who acted in a savage manner’, (56) referring to their brutal cruelty against the slaves who preferred ‘death to slavery’. (59) During that horrid ‘developed transportation system’,10 many committed suicide. Amid the horror, Equiano remained curious of things, maybe thanks to his young age. He recalls his complete ignorance about ships. He remembers his bewilderment about the way the vessel moved on the sea, and how it stopped, to the extent that most slaves believed the Whites had magic powers: ‘The white men had some spell or magic they put in the water when they liked in order to stop the vessel.’ (57) The ships which came from so far away countries and returned, were a mystery, justifying the fear towards the slave masters. Despite the horror of the Middle Passage Olaudah kept the innocence of childhood, remembering that during the ’voyage’ he ‘saw flying fishes, which surprised him very much’. (59) He recalls that they used ‘to fly accross the ship, and many of them fell on the deck’. (59) Nevertheless, the misery of that crossing remains the most painful experience carved in his mind.

4In America, Olaudah travelled quite extensively as a slave, to the West Indies, then to England, then back to Jamaica and America. For example in America he was transported on a sloop, along a river to some plantation where he saw a Black woman with a chain over her head which locked her mouth, preventing her from eating as she was in charge of cooking. Such shocking scenes were daily revolting experiences. Back to the Atlantic coast from the plantation, he made the trip on a horse, ‘a mode of travelling which appeared very old’ (64) to him. Sold to a Master in London, as a gift, he was sent to England. On his way to London, the name Gustavus Vassa was given to him. As he wanted to keep his African name, his master beat him to make him accept his new name. Such an attitude stresses the strength of his character and personality, not forgetting that when he arrived in London in 1757, he was only 12, which enhances the horror of child labour.

5As he was sold mainly to shipowners, he travelled to Portsmouth, Guernsay, Holland, Le Havre, places which he visited. Olaudah Equiano crossed the Atlantic ocean eight times. The imposed means of transport made him a genuine professional sailor. The outside world forged his personality as he was not confined in plantations like most slaves. These trips/transports taught him how to navigate and to fight pirates. Most importantly, he learnt different languages. He learnt to read, to write and to count, often in secret, as slaves “were to be kept illiterate and uneducated according to the ‘master plan”’.11 Such a desire to be educated prevented him from going mad as he never accepted his enslaved status. He was constantly revolted by the rapes, beatings, and killings which he witnessed in the West Indies and Barbados. In this autobiography, the cynicism of the slave traders is denounced forcefully. He explains the reasons behind the regular flow of slaves from Africa. To keep manpower, slaves had to be replaced regularly. For example, he writes that Barbados ‘required 1000 negroes annually to keep up the original stock’, (106) that is why the transport of slaves was referred to as ‘live cargo’ (133) for each ship. Olaudah worked hard to liberate himself because of his suffering and the horror. He freed himself, not by fleeing, but by buying his own self back, through careful savings, obtaining his manumission on the 11th, July 1766.

6 As a liberated man, he became more aware of the beauty of the places, compared with the previous more dramatic periods of his life. As a free man, he continued to work on ships, to travel from America to the Bahamas, to England. In 1773 he planned to go to the Arctic, but reached only Greenland which was ‘striking, grand and uncommon’. (174). The tone of the text changes then, becoming lighter as he crossed the Mediterranean sea and travelled to France, Italy, Spain and Turkey. In Nice he was ‘struck with the elegant buildings and he had in them plenty of extraordinary good wines and rich fruits’. (167) Along the Italian coast he ‘had delightful sailing among the archipelago island’, (167) as he sailed to Genoa ‘one of the finest cities where some of the edifices were of beautiful marble and made a most noble appearance’, (169) and to Naples ‘a charming city, remarkably clean’. (169) In Turkey he remembers ‘the grapes, pomegranates’ as well as the natives who were ‘well-looking and strong made’. (167) In Portugal, his ship made a delightful voyage to Oporto, a town ‘well built and pretty’, (168) where he attended the carnival. Later he sailed to New York which he admired because ‘it is large and well-built and abounds with provisions of all kinds’. (223) Then he went to the Bahamas which he describes as ‘a cluster of large islands with white sandy beaches... with very large birds, called flamingoes’. (152) In New Providence he ‘passed time... pleasantly, with the melodious sound of the catguts under the lime and lemmon trees’. (157) Back to England he was ‘gratified with the sight of London’. (164) Despite the pleasure of these sailings along the coasts and the pride of being a free man, Olaudah Equiano never stopped questioning slavery, reminding his readers that even if he was a free man, the Whites on the ships or on shore kept perceiving him as a Black man, so as ‘slave’. He often had to run away to save his life.

7 The transplantation and the ‘geographical’ travels could have been mere transport reports of a slave who could write. To save his soul, deep down Olaudah kept a conscience alive, a belief in a spiritual power. He definitely experienced a spiritual journey which drove him from his African beliefs to Christianity. This slave narrative is dual, as it describes harsh realities in parallel with a genuine search for meanings in this cruel world. Olaudah looks back towards his African beliefs. The spiritual terrifying side was revived as when he went with his mother to his grandmother’s tomb to feed the spirits. He recalls the night, the cries of the birds and his mother’s lamentations and grief, insisting on the fact that his African people believed in the presence of a Creator of all things who lived up in the sun, and governed ‘girded round with a belt and that he may never eat or drink; but according to some, he smokes a pipe’, (40) which is as Olaudah says ‘our favourite luxury’. (40) He remembers that people used to say that the Creator ‘governs events, especially death and captivity, as for the doctrine of eternity, I do not remember to have ever heard of it: some however believe in the transmigration of souls’. (40) One can feel in these comments some distance mixed with respect. Even if his African spiritual life has not been fully digested, integrated, given his young age when he was kidnapped, he describes it as both foreign and rooted deep-down in him, surely relating these African beliefs to his cherished mother, in a nostalgic way. In any case, the seeds for spirituality are to be found in these memories. His uprooting led him to develop a curiosity towards Christianity, a new religion which he wished to adopt to maintain his humanity. Olaudah’s spirituality developed through different steps linked to his harrowing experiences throughout his peregrinations. The vocabulary used to show the evolution of the trajectory of that spirituality is significant. In order to feel humane and to remain sane he needed to believe in the justice of a Christian God. His first meeting with the Quakers impressed him as he witnessed a crowd suspended to the words of Rev. George Whitfield, preaching with conviction and earnestness. He was struck by the fact that he was sweating: ‘as much as he ever did while in slavery on Montserrat beach.’ (132) These Quakers, called the ‘Seekers’, were a group of British ‘dissenters’, who moved to America because they were dissatisfied with the Anglican Church. As they were not able to express their dissent openly, they met for worship which appealed to Equiano who was looking for a place to escape slavery mentally. As they were in a state of expectation, waiting for a leader, for a ‘Messiah’ who came in the person of George Fox, Equiano was expecting mercy for his soul. He found a peace of mind in that first spiritual transport. He felt then a force which gave him the strength to save money to liberate his body after having freed his soul through such a rebellious ‘Society of Friends’, that of the ‘Quakers’. Later he moved towards the Roman Catholic principles, then tried to understand the Jews, without real satisfaction. So, he read the four Evangelists, which brought him light. After that he went without any particular religious links, being in a state of personal meditation. In Turkey in 1774, he turned towards the Turks with whom he wanted to stay. Again, the reading of the ‘Holy Scriptures’ taught him that there was ‘no new thing under the sun’, (181) in the sense that he had to accept what was appointed to him. The development of his religious thought from Montserrat to London was a long process of maturation leading to his conversion to the faith of Jesus-Christ, the Roman Catholic Church, visiting several churches in London, St James, St Martin’s and St Anne’s in Soho. The spiritual journey linked to physical ones came from his reading of ‘The Conversion of an Indian’ who travelled all the way from India to London to discover the Christian God.12 This reading about a man who came from the south like him, strengthened his faith in the sense that one had to suffer like Jesus Christ to discover faith and find mercy as he asserts: ‘If I did not experience the new birth, and the pardon of my sins, thro’ the blood of Christ before I died, I could not enter the Kingdom of heaven.’ (186) That spiritual process was completed thanks to Rev. Peckwell who reminded him of the shortness of time and the length of eternity, thus suggesting that the suffering on earth was just a trial to deserve peace in eternity. Throughout his specific experience and the time of his sufferings, he often wished to commit suicide, but he resisted as his conversion to Christianity saved him as he put it in verse:

Thus light came in, and I believ’d
Myself forgot, and help receiv’d!
My saviour then I know I found,
For, eas’d from guilt, no more I groan’d. (197)

8The parallel between the physical transport and the spiritual one is tightly linked. In Cadiz, he met Father Vincent who tried to convert him to catholicism, urging him to become a priest, and why not climb up the Church hierachy and become a Pope like Pope Benedict who was Black. He rejected this proposition and went back to England to declare himself a Protestant member of the Church of England. He was proposed by Governor Macnamara to become the Bishop of London and a missionary preaching the Gospel-faith in Africa, but the latter was not in a position to decide and to ordain such a mission. Nevertheless, the idea of sending Olaudah Equiano to Sierra Leone and Senegambia was of great importance to him. He was proud to have attained that recognition from the Church of England thanks to his deep level of faith. That was a recognition of his humanity. Later, his greatest joy was when he was appointed Commissionary for government, in November 1786 to go to Africa to help his poor fellow men in Sierra Leone. That experience led him to write a call for a fair free trade between Africa and Europe based on mutual respect. The factual history documents were accompanied by a reflexion on the relation between men and their Creator. So one can see that the journey was long and Olaudah Equiano, the ‘oppressed Ethiopian’ (232) reached serenity, plenitude and a great sense of justice. He died in 1797 in peace within his new private and religious family, with the feeling of having done justly, ‘loving mercy, and walking humbly before God’ (236). The whole spiritual transport saved his soul and helped him to believe in a better and more equitable eternal world.

9Equiano’s Interesting Narrative and route fit in the tradition of autobiographical texts and travel accounts. The genuine homodiegetic narrator describes the route of a slave across the seas. This positive text moves constantly between factual events and a reflexion upon life and suffering. The narrative describes the physical transport from Africa to America and Europe, but also the spiritual thoughts of a man looking desperately for his ‘humanity’. The reader travels through the different phases of his spiritual quest for reassurance which he finds in ‘the grace of God’ (178). Equiano managed to transform a forced physical displacement into a spiritual quest and conviction which helped him to accept the drama of that history. At the same time, it became his duty to fight slavery as a brutal and shameful commerce where benefits and profits were the only law. In the path of the sinner, Olaudah Equiano adopted a new religion, that of the ’Whites’, to fight from the inside that very brutality, the deviation of White men from their duty and their true spirituality. The new faith encouraged him to struggle for the abolition of slavery. The man could have been selfish, taking care of the family, his two daughters he had with his English wife Miss Cullen, but he was faithful to the end to his own people, the displaced Africans, defending them in Parliament, sending petitions even to the Queen of England, Queen Charlotte.13 In 1788, he pleaded with her to help the wretched Africans:

I presume, gracious Queen, to implore your interposition with your royal consort, in favour of the wretched Africans; that, by your Majesty’s benevolent influence, a period may now be put to their misery; and that they may be raised from the condition of brutes, to which they are at present degraded, to the rights and situation of men. (232)

10Olaudah Equiano knew that the only way to eradicate slavery was through legal systems. So he joined the Abolitionists in Parliament. By writing his own story he wanted to show the world the sufferings of Africans. It transforms such an autobiography into a fascinating, moving, genuine abolitionist text. It furthers the anti-slavery cause as it has shown for the first time, from the inside, not only the ‘horror’, to use Kurtz’s term,14 of slavery, but more importantly the humanity of the slaves. Out of a bitter and dreadful experience, Olaudah Equiano built for himself a dignified life through the experience of a shameful physical transport over three continents. He transformed such a transport into a spiritual one thanks to his tenacity. I would like to conclude by recalling the double meaning of his African name Olaudah: ‘vicissitude or fortunate’, (41) which I think sums up adequately the two sides of his life: historical vicissitude and spiritual fortune. In that sense, this slave narrative, a paradigm for the autobiographical genre, covers the vicissitudes of a whole life healed by a search for spirituality. The literary quality of the text conveys perfectly the harsh physical transports mixed with an illuminating religious journey through powerful feelings, conviction and faith in human beings: an idealism which corresponds to the humanitarian philosophy of 18th century Britain.15

Bibliographie

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Works Cited

10.1017/CBO9780511584084 :

Barry, Boubacar. Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade. Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 1998.

Beier, Ulli. ‘African Writers of the Eighteenth Century’ in Introduction to African Literature. London: Longman, 1982.

10.1017/9781108553766 :

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. London: Penguin, 1981.

Cugoano, Ottobah. Thoughts and Sentimants on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species. 1787. Australia: Penguin Classics, 1999.

Equiano, Olaudah. The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings. 1789. London: Penguin Books, 1995.

Lacarrière, Jacques. Pour une littérature voyageuse. Paris: Editions Complexes, 1999.

Rawick, George. ed. The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1972-79.

Russell, Sandi. Render me my Song. London: Pendora, 1990.

Sancho, Ignatus. Letters of the Late Ignatus Sancho, an African. London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1782.

Notes de bas de page

1 Equiano, Olaudah, The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings (London: Penguin Books, 1995 edition.) (All quotations will refer to this edition).

2 As for example this collection of interviews of slaves undertaken in the 1930’s and published by: Rawick, George ed., The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1972-79.

3 St Giles because these writers used to meet at St Giles Circus. See Dathorne, O.R., ‘African Writers of the Eighteenth Century’ in Introduction to African Literature (London: Longman, 1982).

4 Ignatius Sancho has written Letters of the Late Ignatus Sancho, an African, (London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1782) and Ottobah Cugoano, Thoughts and Sentimants on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species (1787. Australia: Penguin Classics, 1999).

5 Equiano, Olaudah, The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings, op. cit., 32. The province of Eboe is part of today’s Nigeria.

6 Lacarrière, Jacques, Le Bernard-L’hermitte ou le treizième voyage, dans Pour une littérature voyageuse (Paris: Editions Complexes, 1999): 105-106. (My translation)

7 In novels such as Two Thousand Seasons by Ayi Kwei Armah or Le Devoir de violence by Yambo Ouologuem.

8 NaAllah, Abdul-rasheed, ‘Thoughts on the Atlantic Slave Trade: the Roles of Africans and the Issue of Apology for Slavery’, in www.westafricareview.com, ISSN 1525-4488, volume 1. Number 2a (January 2000): 3.

9 Many studies have been published on that period of history as for example Barry, Boubacar, Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 1998).

10 Inikori, Joseph, ‘The Wonders of Africa and the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade’, in www.westafricareview.com, ISSN 1525-4488, volume 1, number 2 (January 2000): 1.

11 In Russell, Sandi, Render me my Song (London: Pendora, 1990): 6.

12 From Wilson, Thomas, An essay towards an Instruction for the Indians, in which there is: The Conversion of an Indian, in a Letter to a Friend, London, 1774, in Equiano’s Interesting Narrative, op. cit., quote 514, 289.

13 Queen Charlotte was on the throne from 1744 to 1818.

14 Conrad, Joseph, Heart of Darkness (London: Penguin, 1981).

15 The book was so popular that by 1794, it had eight English editions and one American. (See Dathorne: Introduction to African Literature, op. cit., 248. Interestingly, it is said that Equiano’s autobiography became a best seller, rivaled in popularity by Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe only. In www.atomicage.com/equiano/life.html.

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