Social Isolation In The Interesting Narrative Of The Life Of Olaudah Eq

Olaudah Equiano in his Interesting archives is taken from his African family and thrown into a atomic number 74ern valet completely foreign to him. Equiano is a slave for a total of ten years and movements to take on certain traits and customs of western thinking. He takes great pains to correct himself, learn religion, and adopt Western mercantilism. However, Equiano holds on to a great do by of his African heritage. Throughout the narrative, the author keeps his African innocence and purity of pattern two qualities he finds sorely lacking in the Europeans. This compromise leaves him in a volatile middle ground between his adapted West and his native Africa. Olaudah Equiano takes on Western ideals magical spell keeping several of his African values this makes him a man associated with two cultures but a phallus of neither. Olaudah Equiano during his long journey is exposed to Western ideas and customs. Although he is initially panicky by them, writing and I was now persuaded that I had gotten into a world of bad spirits, and that they were go to kill me (755), he eventually begins to see Europeans as men superior to us (762). In this change of perceptive Equiano begins to endeavor to emulate his more pale counterparts. To further this cause, he begins to improve himself through and through education. He embarks on a quest to read and write having already partially learned his adopted tongue some two to tierce years after he arrives in England. He is put into give instruction by Miss Guerins while his masters ship is in port and while in her service Equiano is taught Western Christianity and baptized. He thus begins to take on the European religious character as well as the innovative Enlightenment ideal of self-improvement. During Equianos service... ...other leaving him somewhere between both.Olaudah Equianos Interesting Narrative provides insight into cultural assimilation and the difficulties such assimilation. The writ er embraces several Western traits and ideals yet guards his African virtues jealously. In doing so however, he finds himself somewhere in between a full European and a displaced African. This problem of cultural identity Equiano struggled with is still present in groundbreaking American society. The modern day African-American appears to also be in the process of deciding the between two competing cultures and often being left somewhere in middle becoming a victim of cultural identity moreover like Olaudah Equiano some 250 years ago.Works CitedOlaudah, Equiano. The Interesting Narrative of the animateness of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Yassa, Written by Himself. New York St. Martins Press, 1995.