Olaudah Equiano

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think of the situation they’re in as being uncomfortable not brutal and horrible which is what the word wretched conveys. When talking about the conditions in the hold of the ship Equiano uses the word “pestilential” (104). Sickly would have fit in its place but sickly makes the reader think of a cold or something else not so serious. Pestilential makes the reader think of the hold as being extremely deadly.
Equiano uses figurative language to convey the brutal treatment of the slaves on the slave ship and at the slave auction. Equiano describes when he saw a white crewmember on the ship flogged to death and thrown overboard, “…they tossed him over the side as they would have done a brute” (103). This simile shows how brutal the men on the ship were because if they would do this cruel thing to a man of their own kind, one can only imagine what they would do to one of the slaves. Equiano refers to death as his friend, “I now wished for the last friend, death, to relieve me” ...

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