Freedom In Olaudah Equiano, Washington Irving, And Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Freedom is something that everyone deserves. Every man, woman, child, and
ethnicity deserves to have freedom. America is supposed to be “the land of the free”, but
that’s not always the case. There are always rules to be followed and limitations that are
not supposed to be stretched. There are so many different aspects of freedom and
different ways that’s it’s interpreted that there is no set definition. Freedom was never
something that was given to us; we have to achieve it ourselves. It is evident through the
literary works by Olaudah Equiano, Washington Irving, and Ralph Waldo Emerson that
freedom is something we give ourselves, rather than something that is given to us.
In The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano,…show more content… Equiano
describes his life as a slave and his fight to freedom. From the beginning, Equiano desires
to be free. He strived to be educated, picking up new languages and learning about
sailing, reading, and religion from his owners. He begins to trade goods to raise money
to purchase his freedom. When he acquires the necessary money, he is finally able to be
free. In the beginning, Equiano described his captivity as “… an end was put to my
happiness…” (Equiano 356). Any amount of freedom he could have had at that young
age was ripped away from him. He didn’t have a chance to really live life before he was
captured for slavery, losing every bit of freedom he had. Then finally when he acquired
his freedom, he said “… I, who had been a slave in the morning, trembling at the will of
another, was become my own master, and completely free” (Equiano 386). Equaino gave
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himself freedom. He fought for it and went through many unimaginable hardships but he
never gave up.
In Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle, neighbors love the main character Rip
Van Winkle, but his wife nags him because he was not too good with housework