Equiano and the Middle Passage

Equiano and The Middle Passage


Writers write for many different reasons, whether it may be to entertain, inform, or persuade. Writing would be nothing without diction and tone. Diction is the author’s choice of words, and tone it the voice used to reveal the writers mood, feeling on emotion, these two go tighter because the specific words used give the feeling of the story. Equiano’s purpose in writing this normative was to inform everyone of the mistreatment of the slaves on the middle passage in which he does by using these three different tones: depression, frustration and amazement.
The first use of tone that comes up is the tone of helplessness. In the beginning to this narrative he is describing where the slaves were and how they were all compressed into tiny spaces. There was nothing that they could do. This brings out the feeling of helplessness. “… We were all pent up tighter, like so many sheep in a field…”(pg.48). He felt like an animal, that...