44 pages • 1 hour read
Olaudah EquianoThe Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, the African
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1789A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Slave Narrative
The slave narrative is an autobiographical genre with the explicit purposes of informing audiences about the cruelty of the practice of slavery, mobilizing readers to act against the practice, and intervening in the representation of enslaved Black people (including the author). Early work by British writers such as James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw and American writers such as Phillis Wheatley are some of the earliest works published by Black people in Anglo-American culture, making slave narratives foundational texts in literature in English by people of African descent.
As literary texts, slave narratives include generic conventions from multiple forms, including memoir, religious conversion narratives, and accounts of captivity. Writers of the slave narrative use these conventions to demonstrate the intellectual ability of people of African descent, particularly important in a world in which Black people were assumed not to be capable of the rational and creative thought required to produce literature. Equiano uses his text to make an explicit case against slavery, but he also uses it as a means to demonstrate his skills as a writer in English.
Apostrophe
Apostrophe is a rhetorical device in which a writer directly addresses an absent person, e.g., someone who is dead or another audience that is otherwise incapable of responding to the address. In the slave narrative, apostrophes are usually either designed to address loved ones torn from the author or white people who are empowered to do something about the practice.
Equiano, for example, addresses his absent sister in Chapter 1, and his lament over being separated from her helps express what appears to be genuine emotion at this terrible loss. Simultaneously, this apostrophe is evidence presented to the audience to show the cruelty of slavery and the psychological toll it has on survivors. Equiano also addresses Europeans with white supremacist ideas and people of goodwill to exhort them to end the practice of slavery.
