Part I Blog 2 – Summary of reading, O. E. ch. 1

Olaudah Equiano (aka Gustavus Vassa), in the first chapter of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, seems to trying to express three main things: 1) The color of your skin does not define your intellectual ability 2) His tribal culture as remembers it. 3) The difficulties of life at the time in the part of Africa where he was from. In his narrative, you can tell he is trying to be as objective as a person telling his life’s story can be. The memories of his childhood are both vivid and distant, for instance he describes his father as a elder or chief because of his “styled Embrenche”, a scar of the face, also a mark of rank, yet Olaudah does not mention why is father was a man of importance in the tribe suggesting that he did not know. Olaudah’s understanding of the politics of his tribe seem childlike in that they lack depth (at least in chapter one) but seem to have a lot of width, from marriage to warfare Olaudah has something of importance to mention. He draws quite a few distinctions between his original culture and that of what the English deemed “civilized” but also draws a few similarities so called civilized cultures. Olaudah’s story is powerful and I look forward to reading the rest of the book.