"Is it not enough that we are torn from our country and friends, to toil for your luxury and lust of gain?" is the question Olaudah Equiano posed to his European enslavers. This question has crossed many minds over the years. Is it right to take a person from their home and loved ones, in order to advance America's agriculture and economy? Is it just to take a child who would have one day became the chief of his tribe, leading his people in victory and in failure for many years, so that the life of a white European or American is made easier? The story of Olaudah Equiano paints a vivid picture of life on a slave ship. This narrative causes one to question the greed of mankind and how much the human spirit can endure before it is broken.
             Olaudah was 11 years old when he was taken from his home. He was born around 1745, a time in which slave trade was very common and had been going on for more than 150 years. It would continue in America until slave trade overseas was ended in 1808. In the period of the slave trade more than 3.5 million slaves had been imported to the United States. Olaudah was 1 out of the millions of Africans who were enslaved all over the world. Slave trade stole away the life of not just one young African boy, but millions.
             Conditions on the slave ships were beyond wretched. Men, women and children were crammed into every available space. They weren't given an adequate amount of room, food or breathing space. The stench was appalling. Olaudah Equiano describes it saying "I received such a salutation in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life; so that, with the loathsome of the stench ... I became so sick and low that I was not able to eat." The atmosphere aboard a slave ship was inhumane, to say the least.
             Olaudah wrote, "I now wished for the last friend, death, to relieve me..." Upon seeing his people flogged, some to the point of death, and hearing the scr...