Equiano Douglas the Narratives of Frederick Douglass

Equiano Douglas

The narratives of Frederick Douglass and Thomas Equiano both offer insight into the African and African-American experiences prior to the Civil War. While both Douglass and Equiano can both easily be classified as abolitionists, their approach to abolitionism and political activism via literature differs significantly. One of the main reasons why Douglass and Equiano differ in their approach is that they wrote during completely different time periods: Equiano nearly a century prior to Douglass. Equiano's perspective therefore focuses more on the trans-Atlantic slave trade and even on slavery in Africa. Douglass's narrative was penned after the Fugitive Slave Act and the Compromise of 1850 had been passed. Moreover, the two men had completely different life stories: which are recounted in their respective autobiographies. These autobiographies form the basis for scholarship on African-American history, literature, and politics.

Newman puts Douglass into a historical perspective of the history of black political activism in the United States. Douglass presented what Newman calls "a radical form of the pastoral to broaden the appeal of abolitionism," (127). Without coming right out and saying so, Newman suggests that Douglass shared much in common ideologically with the transcendentalists. Both the themes of ecological sensitivity and self-reliance were common to Emerson, Thoreau, and Douglass. Newman points out that Douglass also made a strong connection between seemingly disparate political issues including racism, slavery, labor issues, social justice, and environmental justice. Newman goes so far as to call Douglass's autobiography a "protoenvironmentalist critique of capitalism's alienation of ordinary people from the land," (128). An almost Marxist perspective, therefore, emerges in the writing of Douglass. Capitalism exploits both people and nature. Newman also acknowledges the irony of Douglass portraying nature as a real physical obstacle towards obtaining freedom and self-reliance, as thick forests and mountain passes made it difficult for slaves to escape.

Another re-framing of slave narratives is accomplished by Carretta's biography of Thomas Equiano, Equiano, The African: Biography of a Self-Made Man, which is reviewed by Richards. Richards points out that Equiano was the quintessential "self-made man" who understood how to build a sort of brand for himself in order to promote his political ideas and his books. Equiano was much different from Douglass, in that he emphasized entrepreneurialism rather than a return to a pastoral ideal as means of self-liberation. Moreover, the Students' Guide to African-American Literature, 1760 to the Present points out that Equiano "helped to establish and run a Virginia plantation in the mid-1770s," and that he wasn't really anti-slavery so much as he was anti-cruelty (5). In spite of his emphasis on Christian ideals, Equiano's morality comes across as being somewhat contradictory in light of the core social and political undercurrents of racism. It would seem that Douglass had become more keenly aware of the politics of race, writing as he did a century after Equiano. In fact, Douglass perhaps had exposure to Marxism, Transcendentalism, and other ideologies that shaped his worldview differently from that of Equiano. What Equiano offers is a greater perspective on the differences between the slavery modles that existed in Africa, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the nature of slavery in the United States.