Conversion, Providence, and God’s Will Theme Analysis

When Equiano first begins to learn about Christianity from the Miss Guerins in England, he is intrigued but also ambivalent. After all, he has described a thriving belief system with which he grew up in his home village. Equiano does come to be baptized himself not long afterwards, but it is only over time that he comes to grapple with spiritual questions on a more profound level and to fully embrace an identity as a Christian. Following his first trips to England after being baptized, Equiano begins to relate some of the Christian teachings he’s learned to the events of his own life—for example, when Pascal betrays him and sells him to the cruel Captain James Doran, Equiano begins to wonder if God is punishing him for his sins. Throughout the narrative, Equiano’s desire to make his own choices and control his own life comes into tension with his growing belief that Providence is in charge of human activity and that he therefore must accept what happens to him as God’s will. While his belief in Providence can at times aid Equiano in his struggles against hardship and cruelty, it also can be seen as making him more passive in his own attempts to create change. For example, Equiano reflects at one point that, whether he ends up being freed or remaining in captivity, his entire life is a question of God’s will—either way, it’s nothing that his own desire can change. Equiano never explicitly settles on a conclusion to this question, although the novel does imply that it’s possible both to believe in God’s ultimate power over human affairs and to work towards what one believes is God’s will on earth.

It is only after a near death experience on a sea journey near the North Pole that Equiano fully commits to embarking on a spiritual journey, reading the Bible, studying Christian doctrines, and struggling to come to terms with his faith. Then, while working on a ship traveling to Spain, he experiences a moment of epiphany in which he no longer feels anxious or uncertain about his position within God’s plan. Equiano’s conversion firmly places his narrative within a genre of spiritual autobiographies that was quite popular at the time, in which identity is achieved in part through a miraculous, sudden revelation of faith. From the moment of his rebirth on, he’s fully established as a converted Christian, eager to work to fulfill God’s plan on earth even as he acknowledges that there’s much about the universe and about eternal truths that he will never know: he’s content to simply trust in his faith.