e the oppression of slavery and become a part of English society itself, while also becoming "an instrument towards the relief of his suffering countrymen" (30). In other words, he offers the experiences of his life as the means for legitimating his social analysis.
Equiano begins with his childhood and continues into mature manhood. His emotional concerns as an eleven-year-old are paramount and extreme and are those of home and family. He cites his special attachment to his mother (42), and when he and his sister are kidnapped into slavery and later separated, he is "left in a state of distraction not to be described" (48). Their brief reunion and then permanent separation amplify Equiano's emotional investment and influence the way he experiences the injustices of slavery and the kinds of attachments he forms with fellow slaves as well as various masters throughout his life. His anxiety for his sister's well-being and undoubtedly horrific fate, for example, fuses with his observations over the years of the wholesale and persistent rape of African girls and women by white slavers, masters, and overseers (50ff; 93-4). Black slavers, described as "those sable destroyers of human rights," confined the slaves but never violated them sexually (50).
Equiano's intellectual concerns are the result of the gradual unfolding of his experience, which is that of the fears and horrors of slavery. His analysis of the injustice of the institution combines with an analysis of race, and when he attributes to differences of situation (45) the perceived differences in intelligence and civilization, he argues for universal sympathy and benevolence between the peoples of the world. Rational understanding, Eq
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