Chapter 2 Summary and Analysis

Equiano is the youngest of six sons and a daughter. He is a favorite of his mother. He is taught from a very early age both agriculture and warfare, in the form of javelin-throwing. He grows up in this way until age eleven, when he and his sister are kidnapped from home while all the adults are away tending the fields. His kidnappers, two men and a woman, force the two to walk for two days, stopping only briefly at a small house. Equiano tries to cry out and is gagged and put into a sack. To his great horror, Equiano is then separated from his sister, who is taken elsewhere, and for days Equiano does not eat and has to be forcibly fed. After changing several hands, he lands as a slave in the house of a kind chieftain and...