In the beginning of Chapter 5, Equiano relives the anguish that he felt upon being forced to accept Captain Duran as his master, despite being free in the eyes of the law. I found it strange that in his description of the events, Equiano does not blame the white men who are determining his fate, but instead puts everything in the context of God’s will. He does not express any hatred or disgust at the actions of his master or the captain, though their greed is costing him his freedom. Instead, Equiano writes that he “began to think that I must have done something to displease the Lord, that he thus punished me so severely.”
Equiano thus attributes his continued slavery to the fact that he had once “rashly sworn” to spend one day as a free man having fun. Though perhaps Equiano’s readers would have been accustomed to this type of self-detriment, his explanation seems ridiculous to me. Equiano refuses to blame the whites in his narrative, and instead blames his slavery on this one minor discrepancy (in an otherwise exemplary life). The explanation seems contrived to give readers the idea that Equiano is so incredibly pious and good that he could not possibly attribute these horrendous events to anything but his own sins. He is saintly and patient, telling his readers, “I thought God might perhaps have permitted this in order to teach me wisdom and resignation”— a line that left me thinking “Are you serious?”
I think this type of writing is a product of the fact that Equiano eventually managed to move up in life and live freely and comfortably. His novel is not written to inflame his white readership with accusations, but rather to ignite feelings of sympathy and shame within their hearts. He writes about the terrible behavior of the white people he has encountered, but paints himself as the unbiased narrator and allows his readership to condemn the characters in his story. He seems to be building up the persona of a “noble savage” and only occasionally addresses the anger felt by the slaves towards the tyranny they are subjected to. I think this makes the text much less interesting, but I assume that it would have been necessary for a black man in 1789 to write in this way.
