Olaudah Equiano Group

Question:

bradgirls3
bradgirls3
Student
High School - 10th Grade

Why does Equiano blame the illness aboard the ship on the "improvident avarice" of the traders?

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Posted by bradgirls3 on Sunday October 18, 2009 at 12:57 PM and tagged with middle passage, olaudah equiano, slavery.

Answers:


  1. pohnpei397 Teacher
    Community / Jr. College

    eNotes Editor

    The word "improvident" means "short-sighted" and "avarice" means greed.

    So what Equiano is saying is that the slave traders were so greedy that they didn't think about the long term -- just about the short term.  In this case, what that means is that they packed too many slaves into the ships because they wanted to make as much money as possible.

    Because they did this, the living conditions for the slaves were terrible and many of them became sick.  This was improvident because it didn't really take into account how much money the slave traders would lose by having the slaves be in bad condition when the time came to sell them (or how much they'd lose by having slaves die along the way).

    Sources:
    http://articles.castelarhost.com/olaudah_equiano_african_...

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    Posted by pohnpei397 on Sunday October 18, 2009 at 1:03 PM