SOURCE: “Disguised Voice in The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African,” in Black American Literature Forum, Vol. 19, No. 2, Summer 1985, pp. 64-9.

In the following essay, Samuels contends that Olaudah Equiano's intention in his Narrative, which is to point out the miseries of the slave trade, is enhanced by the use of a disguised voice, through which the author takes control of his audience and holds their attention, outwitting and flattering his white readers while simultaneously revealing that they are unscrupulous and uncaring.

I.

The author of the slave narrative confronted the difficult task of reporting his lived experiences during slavery to an audience which did not recognize him as a member of its society and, in fact, viewed him “as an alien whose assertion of common humanity and civil rights conflicted with some of its basic beliefs,” including the institutionalization of theories of the...