Chapter Four: Olaudah Equiano: Astonishment and Terror

Chapter four is the first chance Rediker gives his readers to follow one person, stretched out over one chapter, and their journey on the Middle Passage. This specific chapter is based on Olaudah Equiano, who was seized from his home in Igbo (present day Nigeria) at age eleven. Equiano and his sister were forced to work at the home of their captors. His captors later pulled him and his sister apart and they were both sold many times. Six or seven months after being captured he had arrived at the sea coast and likely the slave trading port of Bonny. He was placed aboard one ship and described an instant distinction of terror. "Whites looked and acted as I thought in so savage a manner; for I have never seen among any people such instances of brutal cruelty." At this point the reader feels for all of the enslaved aboard as Rediker inserts a passage from Equiano's narrative which goes into conditions of the ship. "Everyone was confined together belowdecks, the apartments were so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself. The enslaved were spooned together in close quarters, each with about as much room as a corpse in a coffin. The stench became absolutely pestilential as the sweat, the vomit, the blood, and the necessary tubs full of excitement almost suffocated us" I thought this chapter was very intriguing because it focused on one person's experience. What made Olaudah Equiano different from other the enslaved aboard slave ships, was what he did with himself after he landed in Virginia. The book mentions Equiano, "learned all he could from the sailors about how the ship worked." This later became his own path to liberation. He went on to work as a sailor, and buy his freedom at age twenty four. Equiano was also the first person to write about the slave ship from the perspective of the enslaved. Therefore, I believe the Rediker chose his focus of this chapter wisely. The reader is really able to get a feel for life as a slave before, during, and after the Middle Passage.