Slavery :: Slavery Essays

Oppression and pitilessness just two of the many words employ to describe slavery. except no word or words can be used to truly illustrate the hardships and tough times that the slaves went through. In the time of slavery, impartial race were taken from their homes and separated from their families to be sold as workers to people around the world. They did non just work, similar to modern times, they were restrained and held absorbed while being forced to work in terrible and incompatible conditions. These people had dark skin, which the slave owners saw as an asset imputable to the fact that they could stay in the sun longer. In particular was a slave by the name of Olaudah Equiano, who wrote a personal narrative on his own experiences during slavery. In his writings, he did an excellent job in bring out the oppression and cruelty in his own life and other peoples as well. The point of his narrative was to turn the English public against slavery. Based on what I have read, I can now give a clearer opposition to slavery due to the fact that he has exemplified what slavery was very like.     The idea of taking many, many people from their homelands and bringing them to a contrary place seems a bit over whelming. This seems like impossibility when looked at by the slaves point of view. During the times of slaves, the ships and such were not as ripe as they are now. They used wind and oars to power the boats. In addition, these boats were not being produced at a high rate. The point being the ships were so over crowded that it seemed pointless to ship slaves overseas. The slaves were put in these ships and jam-packed into rooms that were not made to accommodate that many people. Equiano writes, "The closeness of the place, and the erupt of the climate, added to the number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely fair to middling room to turn himself, almost suffocated us" (p.56). This was how the slaves wer e kept when they were put nether the deck. Enormous amounts of people packed into superstar small space. In this situation, one must think about the possible outcomes. If there are a lot of people, literally on top have on another, eructation of disease will eventually occur- and of course it did.