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Name Professor Course Date Comparing and Contrasting Equino and Douglass

Introduction Equino opened his Narrative by elaborating on the struggle had come with writing the memoir. In his Narrative he remained passionate on the difficulties that memoir writers went through. The Narrative explained how they had to depend themselves from people who had remained critical on the truth of their work. Equino in his Narrative apologized to his reader since he thought he never had most exciting story for them but still had hope that the story was helpful to other slaves in his position. The Narrative at its beginning described the Equino’s homeland and the specific district where he was born. The homeland was kingdom of Benin and the district of birth was Eboe. On the other hand, The Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglas predicted on his self-image inspirations as a professional orator, Official and diplomat of the U.S government as well as the tireless civil rights agitator. The Narrative also successfully spurred Douglass’s enlistment into the antislavery literally wars thus becoming black American most effective exponent. Just like Equino’s narrative, Fredrick Douglass narrative described his place of birth. He was born as slave on Maryland’s eastern show. Both narratives were grouped as the slave narratives but there existed some obvious differences between them. These differences were as a result of their diverse upbringings and also their personal adherence to social standards. Differences between Equino and Frederick Douglass Narratives Comparing Equino’s Narrative and Frederick Douglass’s Narrative, the two had different expression when telling their stories. The expression style used by Equino speaks his emotional experiences that he went through as a slave. On the other hand, Frederick Douglass had little to offer about his slavery life since he actually struggled and fought to regain his pride. At a time in the narrative, Equino questioned his master, an emotion that gave him image that he was more than just a slave (Equiano, 7). The master whipped Equino, he still recovered with the mindset of being free. Frederick Douglass on the other hand ran away after been fought for the first time. Frederick tried to return back but he was afraid until when he was given a kind of the root to convince him that the given root was to prevent him from been whipped ever again (Douglass, 43). Frederick Douglass remained fearful until when he fought with Mr. convoy for two hours thus it became the turning point of his life since it rekindled his manhood to be free from been beaten again (Douglass, 44). Frederick Douglass, to some extent, in his narrative accepted the slavery life. ‘It’s okay for me to put up being mistreated since everyone else is dealing with it’. He seems to be giving slavery a softer sense when he claimed that there was a time to come having served as a slave to be and remain in the better side of the life (Douglass, 66). In addition, Frederick Douglass has an unbroken soul, spirit and body to fight back and regain confidence that he had at the beginning. He witnessed the horrid treatments of slave masters hence his story seems to be more realistic Frederick became the victim of slavery by been beaten by slave masters (Douglass, 87). This is very different from the case of Douglass who remained against slavery life throughout his narrative. Equino even confronted his master not to be enslaved (Equiano, 7). In both narratives, both Equino and Frederick Douglass seem to have explained little to develop some leniency to their audience. Even use of harsh spoken words by Frederick Douglass in which he claimed that he wanted to die to test the feeling of being free, He still used freedom as an excuse so as to give softer side of the slavery. Frederick said, ‘when I shall get there, I shall not be required to have a pass’ (Douglass, 98). Equino and Frederick Douglass contrasted there self-perceptions as evident in the titles. Equino termed himself as the African while Frederick Douglass was an American slave. While Frederick was born into a slavery system in South America, his mother remained a black slave while his father was a white man (Douglass, 3). On the other hand, Equino was born in Africa and later at his age of 11 years he was kidnapped and forced to slavery (Equiano, 2). At this time, Slavery absorption in American culture had a span of 50 years and therefore American slavery was proclaimed as man’s heritage. Being an American, Frederick Douglass did not describe in detail his life as a slave but Equino, whose life is influenced by world travelers especially England clearly and explicitly described his slavery life. In his narrative, Frederick Douglass was more focused on authenticity rather than interest with an aim of escaping the slavery life (Douglass, 117). The childhood of Frederick Douglass missed warm memories in the narrative since his father was a white American and most probably a white master. However, he suffered just like other slaves since he was separated from his mother at a very young age to become a slave child (Douglass, 247). On the other hand, Equino dependent on his faith to get him through hardships. ‘I felt like I was reading spiritual rather than a slave narrative’ (Equiano, 33). Similarities between Equino and Frederick Douglass Narratives Both Olaudah Equino and Frederick Douglass wrote their narratives to reflect their lives as slaves. The two writers never gained recognition because of their fictional story in their narratives but instead gained recognition for their real life story which was used to teach valuable lessons in life (Morrison, 103). Both Narratives presented Equino’s and Frederick Douglass’s lives themselves but the context is aimed at the society to learn and gain knowledge from the stories. The writing styles in the two narratives are very similar though the two individual were unique (Morrison, 104). From the American literature, the analysis two seminal works by Equino and Douglass are drawn from their autobiographies and both reveal that the process of learning to write and read as based on conceptualization of social and personal liberation. While in his chapter on the narrative, Fredrick Douglass’s ‘learning to read and write’ An American slave was written in 1845 and excerpt from Equino ‘learning to read’ was written after a period of more than one century later in 1965 (Morrison, 108). The two had common themes which are identifiable by the readers. Those themes are analyzed to provide the readers with a sense of historical continuity that particularly defines African American Civil rights movements. The two themes demonstrates the benefits of basic reading and writing skills that most people ignore or take for granted (Morrison, 110). According to the two narrators, Equino and Douglass, these reading and writing skills becomes the simple tools that are capable of facilitating profound and lasting social and personal change. The two narratives reveal that there exist important connection between the process of reading, writing and becoming fully educated and the concept of freedom (Morrison, 113). The narrative of Equino is just but a prototype of slave narrative which later was used as the chief instrument of antislavery crusade. According to the narrative, a new literature genre had been created by the former slave when he mixed together forms of spiritual autobiography along with the story about escape of slaves from bondage (Morrison, 117). In this case the pattern of slavery can be observed in nineteenth century as fugitive –slave works. This was clearly noted by the Narrative of the Life by Fredrick Douglass. In their Narratives, Equino and Douglass were careful when making the point that black person have ability to develop and become successful materially through personal enterprise. In addition, Equino puts emphasis that personal, spiritual and material achievements are recognized only when a man or a woman has the freedom to accomplish of this (Morrison, 127). Both Equino and Frederick Douglass spent much time and described in details the processes in which they learned how to read and write and more so the difficulties that they faced in order to know how to read and write. According to Douglass’s narrations, he acquired his reading and writing skills from with a lot of difficulties, ‘regarding literacy, I had no regular teacher and if the teacher is available, he or she considered education and slavery to be incompatibles (Douglass, 177). At the initial stages of his narrative, Douglass argues that illiterate is just like living in a ‘mental darkness’ and therefore he must devote himself first to learn how to read and write (Douglass, 5). Just like Equino, Douglass works to counter challenges associated with learning how to read and write and considers this as one of the ways to get salvation from the mental darkness. On the other hand Equino responds to his personal passion to learn how to read and write and try to create circumstance that makes reading easier despite the challenges that are involved in the process (Morrison, 129). In this case, both Douglass and Equino new the power of language and they worked towards their fluency goals in reading and writing. Both Frederick Douglass and Equino believes that word can become a powerful agent for social as well as personal change (Morrison, 134). From their autobiographies, they offer homage to those texts which opens their minds and shape their social and political perspectives. While Frederick Douglass is moved deeply by exchange of a slave and his master in the Columbian Orator, Equino feels provoked by various books which contains wide range of similar subjects. Equino starts by giving history of Africans as well as African American and giving acknowledgement for the influence of seminal texts (Equiano, 6) In the two narrative, Both Frederick Douglass and Equino are aware that white people in position of power have language command which threatens and therefore by getting learned can make African American target and resist such command on language (Morrison, 174). In this case Douglass described his kind mistress in one of his quotation ‘rush at me face made all of fury and snatch from me a newspaper” (Douglass, 389). This manner revealed Douglass’s apprehension. On the other hand, Equino is humbled and realizes that he was bereft of skills required to convey his ideas when it comes to matters of writing (Equiano, 6).