Religious Roles in the Story of Olaudah Equiano's Life Olaudah Equiano's story is truly magnificent. Not only does the reader get to see the world through Equiano's personal experiences, but he also gets to read an important autobiography that combines the form of a slave narrative with that of a spiritual conversion autobiography. Religion can be seen as the crux of the issue in Equiano's long and extraordinary journey. Through Equiano's personal experiences, the reader discovers how important a role religion played in his narrative and that of his life. More specifically, we learn how his religious conversion signified a kind of freedom as important as his independence from slavery. As you read his story, you learn how dedicated he is to his Christian faith; from his constant narration of Scripture to the way Equiano feels a growing sense of power from biblical texts for the oppressed community. However, at the same time, Equiano's Christian piety can be questioned. Was Equiano really trying to tell the story of his soul's spiritual journey, did he truly believe that God would deliver him, or was he simply using religion as a way to manipulate British and American readers into accepting him as a credible narrator. Regardless of which of these facts is true, religion is most likely the defining feature of his life story. Equiano's discovery of Christianity first began when he was no older than 12 years old and first arrived in England, where he saw the sight of snow for the first time. Curious to know what it was, he asked a companion and soon discovered that "...a great man in the heavens, called God..." [Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative...... middle of paper.... .. hurt, of whom our Savior speaks, who are they?" (Equiano, 124) Undeniably there is no doubt that religion played an important role in Equiano's life and in his fiction. No matter what you believe about piety Equiano's Christian faith, there is no doubt that his religious conversion (at the very least) gave him a kind of freedom of tranquility that was just as vital to his heart as his own liberation from slavery brought him, just as Equiano himself mentions of his life and all the other events that happened in it; "... what makes an event important, unless through its observation we become better and wiser, and learn 'to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly before God?'" (Equiano, 253)BibliographyEquiano, Olaudah. ​​The interesting tale of the life of Olaudah Equiano Edited by Angelo Costanzo, NY: Broadway Literary Texts, 2004.