He had never seen such cruelty towards men of his own race, and others too. People were flogged, beaten and whipped mercilessly for many things, and died from diseases caused by poor sanitation. He was beaten for not eating, people were beaten for trying to kill themselves, and the air was so rancid that people suffocated. Equiano's account of the Middle Passage could be incorporated into an anti-slavery appeal by showing how bad slaves were treated in the Middle Passage. Equiano's intended audience was probably slaveholders or people who could do something about slavery. Equiano was an adult when he wrote this, which was an account of his childhood thirty years earlier. This is important, because stories change over the years. They get lavished on, things get forgotten, and stories seem to take on a whole new meaning. This story could be completely true, or it could be completely false to make people think it was worse than it actually was. Furthermore, if Equiano were born in South Carolina and not in Africa, this text could be completely false. If he were born there and never came from Africa, then this account would be false and should be regarded as such