The Significance of Equiano’s Interesting Narrative in the Slave Narrative Genre

In the 1780s, when the British Parliament debated whether or not to end the slave trade, Olaudah Equiano known as Gustavus Vassa became an active participant in the antislavery movement. This essay explores the importance of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, from the perspective that his type of personal narrative provided the form and character of the slave narrative genre. As a former slave under the British Empire, Equiano wrote a two-volume autobiography as part of the campaign to end the slave trade. Equiano’s Interesting Narrative is one of the first attempts by an African writer who suffered from being denied his human and spiritual potential. While Equiano followed the tradition of spiritual autobiography, he added a new dimension that consisted of social protest against inhumane acts that Christians practiced in the slavery institution. In the slave narrative, slaves and ex-slaves reveal the African view of life, exposing that Christianity is a self-mockery, democracy a lie, people become things, and profit abandons ethics. Because of slavery, the anti-slavery movement arose, and because of the anti-slavery movement, the slave narrative prospered.