Question

This excerpt was written by Olaudah Equiano, an enslaved African man who was taken to Barbados. The effect of an author’s choices can change over time. For example, Equiano includes the phrase "poor creatures” to appeal to the reader’s emotions. However, by today’s standards this is considered dehumanizing.

Read the passage, then answer the question.

Their huts, which ought to be well covered, and the place dry where they take their little repose, are often open sheds, built in damp places; so that when the poor creatures return tired from the toils of the field, they contract many disorders, from being exposed to the damp air in this uncomfortable state.

–Sugar Changed the World,
Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos

What is the primary purpose of this passage?

to create sympathy for enslaved workers
to demonstrate a typical day of labor on a plantation
to compare the living conditions of plantation owners and enslaved workers
to show ways housing on plantations could have been improved

Answer 1

to create sympathy for enslaved workers

The passage emphasizes their poor, damp housing and the illnesses they suffer after hard work, using emotional language ("poor creatures") to elicit the reader's sympathy.