The Life of Olaudah Equiano: Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis

Equiano asks to be excused for laying out in such detail the customs of his native country: he still looks upon those memories with pleasure. He continues that he was the youngest son, and thus his mother’s favorite. But his happiness ended at the age of eleven. While adults were working in the fields, children often drew together to guard against kidnappers who would sometimes come. One day Equiano saw, from up in a tree, his neighbors being seized by one of them, but he blew an alarm and the children were saved.

One day, though, while Equiano was home with his sister, two men and a woman snuck into their home and seized them, tying their hands and carrying them through the woods. For several days they kept to the woods, and Equiano hoped to be saved, but when he saw others and cried out, his and his sister’s hands and mouths were bound. His only comfort was being with his sister, but although they begged the captors to keep them together, they were soon separated.

After many days, Equiano changed masters and was delivered to a chieftain with two wives, who spoke his same language and treated him rather well. He was there a month, and was sometimes trusted to wander out of the house, so he attempted to figure out where he was and how he might escape to his home.

One day, however, while Equiano was helping an elderly female slave to take care of the chickens, he tossed a pebble at one of the chickens and accidentally killed it. The old woman became enraged and said she’d make sure he’d be beaten. Frightened, he ran into the bushes and hid: soon the whole village was enlisted to hunt for him, but they didn’t find him. As night fell, he began to fear he’d die in the woods, and that he might be bitten by a snake. He crept back into his master’s kitchen and lay down, wishing for death. When the woman awoke, she was shocked (she’d thought he’d escaped home), and, mollified, she asked the master to be kind to him.

After the master’s daughter died, the master went mad, and Equiano was sold again, carried again for many days through many woods and deserts. As he was brought through Africa, he picked up several different languages, which were more similar to each other than European ones. After a long time, he was shocked to find himself brought to a house where he encountered his sister. They embraced and wept, and the captors were moved: indeed, Equiano notes that he was never ill treated by them more than being tied up so he wouldn’t run away. These captors allowed them to be together for a time, but soon enough his sister was sold again.

Equiano, too, was sold again, this time brought to a beautiful, fertile town called Tinmah. He first encountered sugar-cane here and was sold for 172 shells of it to a merchant, before being sold to a wealthy widow who had a son around Equiano’s age. She allowed Equiano to eat with her son, which surprised him; he was treated so well that he sometimes forgot he was a slave. He was there for two months, and was beginning to reconcile himself to his situation when one morning—his companion still asleep—he was stolen away yet again. It was as if at the moment of greatest happiness, fortune deemed it necessary to usher in yet more sorrow and violence.

Equiano then came to a land that, for the first time, had far different customs than his own: they didn’t circumcise their sons, they ate without washing their hands, and they used European cross bows. They sometimes wanted to adorn Equiano as they did themselves, but he refused. He came to the banks of a huge river, which astonished him, and he was put into a canoe to paddle until night. At the end of six or seven months, he finally came to the coast.

Upon arriving, the first thing Equiano noticed was the sea holding a slave ship, waiting for cargo. He was handled by the crew to see if he was strong and healthy. The long hair, strange language, and light skin of these men convinced Equiano that they were going to kill him, and he longed to become the lowest slave in his own country. Seeing a furnace burning on the ship, and black people chained around it, he was convinced that he was going to be killed and he fainted.

Upon awakening, Equiano asked some of the black people now gathered around him if they were going to be eaten by the white men, and they tried to reassure him, giving him liquor to restore his spirits. Having never tasted liquor before, the drink only shocked Equiano more.

Equiano was moved under the decks, where noxious smells assaulted him and made him too sick to eat. When he refused food, two white men whipped him. He would have jumped over the ship to kill himself, but he was chained, so he could not: indeed, he’d seen other Africans being flogged mercilessly for trying to jump.

Equiano found some people from his own country, who explained to him that they were being carried to the white people’s land to work for them. But, given the savage, brutal nature of the captors, he still feared being killed and eaten. He asked if these white men lived in the ship, and, if not, why he’d never heard of them: they live far off, he was told. On asking how the ship moved, they said they didn’t know. The white men put cloth on the masts, and they had some magical means of stopping the ship when they wanted. Equiano was convinced the white men were spirits who would sacrifice him.

On deck one day, Equiano saw another ship nearby, and he was convinced it was stopped by magic. The white men seemed happy to see the people on the ship, and Equiano and the other slaves were transferred to the new ship and put under deck. Altogether, the stench was overpowering, and they were crammed together almost to the point of suffocating. Many people grew sick, and the women’s shrieks and the groans of the dying filled the air. Equiano began to envy those who did die. One day the captors had caught a great deal of fish. After the captors ate, they did not give the leftovers to the captives: instead, they threw the rest back into the sea.

Another day, two captives who were chained together somehow managed to jump into the sea, followed by one other, who was sick and thus unchained. Alarmed, the crew immediately put everyone on deck back below and they managed to snatch back the third man: they flogged him mercilessly for preferring death to slavery.

This voyage was also Equiano’s first experience of flying fishes, as well as of the quadrant, which astonished him, persuading him once more of his captors’ magical abilities.

Finally they arrived at the island of Barbados, where merchants and planters came aboard to examine the slaves. The slaves were told they were going to be taken to work for the white people, together with others from their native countries. They were led to the merchant’s yard and enclosed like sheep. Equiano marveled at the multi-story brick homes and people on horseback.

After several days came the market sale. Family and friends were separated cruelly. Equiano marvels that these so-called Christians failed so immensely at the golden rule of treating one’s neighbor like oneself. Wresting one’s loved ones away from each other is, he argues, the height of cruelty.