As the most influential black American author of his time, in The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavas Vassa, the African, written by himself, Olaudah Equiano enlightened for mass disseminated many of the inhumanities and atrocities associated with the slave trade that were previously known only to those most intimately involved in it and began an entirely new genre known as slave fiction. Part of the success of Equiano's tale must be attributed to the familiar themes of capture, captivity, and restoration that he experienced and that many had read about in one of the many “captivity narratives” so popular in the early colonial period. One such captivity narrative that has many similarities to Equiano's slave narrative is Mary Rowlandson's A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson. Not only do both stories follow a very similar story arc, but both stories enjoyed enormous popularity that sparked the formation of an entirely new genre. However, while Equiano may have chosen to model his fiction on the prison tales that had preceded him due to their popularity and familiarity, and despite it being so similar in form to Rowlandson's fiction, he wrote with a very different purpose to Rowlandson's . narrative, Equiano meets all the criteria used to define a prison narrative of the 17th and 18th centuries. The most basic criterion of a captivity narrative is that an individual goes through three distinct periods: the period of capture, the period of captivity, and the period of restoration. Considering Equiano's story as an outline, it is clear that every required part is present. Equiano's period of capture begins at the age of... middle of the card... the evils of his slavers would alienate the people he was trying to influence. Instead, recognizing the virtues that the white man possesses despite all that Equiano witnesses, he appears to be magnanimous and noble and is able to bring the white man to his cause. Although Equiano's slave narrative served a very different purpose than captivity narratives. like Rowlandson's, it was, however, the perfect means by which to present himself and his story to the colonialists. By choosing the captivity narrative as the format, he, as the narrator, was cast in the role of the hero while those who held him captive would be perceived as the villains. By choosing the narrative of captivity, Equiano launched an entirely new genre of storytelling whose sole purpose was to help combat and inform about the evils of slavery, the slave narrative..