1. Why is Phyllis Wheatley considered a remarkable individual? She was a slave who taught herself English and very well educated. She wrote poems about her race, native country, and life as a slave. She was also the first African American woman poet. 2. Describe the relationship between Phyllis Wheatley and her master/owner. Phyllis Wheatley’s master/owner treated her like family. She said that her master/owner, Susanna Wheatley, treated her like her own child. 3. To whom is "The University of Cambridge in New England" addressed? What is the theme of this poem? *The poem is addressed to the students she went to school with. 4. Choose a line from "On Being Brought from Africa to America" that reveals the theme of the poem “Remember, …show more content…
What is the theme of "Hymn to Evening?" Use material from the poem to illustrate. The theme is the beauty in things around her. “At morn to wake more heav’nly, more refin’d, so shall the labours of the day begin. More pure and more guarded than the snakes of sin” 7. What connection does Phyllis feel to the painter in her poem "To S.M., a Young African Painter?" What line(s) show this feeling? 8. In "To His Excellency General Washington" and other poems, Wheatley uses Columbia to represent what? Columbia was a goddess that in her poems that set the colonist free. 9. In several of her poems Wheatley refers to a "muse." What is a muse, and what does she mean by using this term? A muse is a person that is considered an inspiration. She refers to God as a muse and He is her inspiration. 10 When Phyllis Wheatley traveled to London, she met several nobles. Whom did she fail to meet? She failed to meet George the III. 11. Wheatley almost always wrote in heroic couplets. What are the characteristics of the heroic couple. Give an example of one of her heroic couplets (give the poem reference). In heroic couplets, the lines rhyme. One of the poems that have a heroic couple is “On Being Brought from Africa to
Wheatley explains in her works that there is a God that believes in you, no matter what race or religion. The idea of hope is so strongly engraved into Wheatley’s stories because hope is all she had to cling to while in Africa and then while being separated from her husband after arriving in America. A man named John Wheatley purchased Wheatley and gave her a much better life than she ever imagined. From her journey across the ocean upon her arrival to the United States of America, she expressed her love for writing as an illustration of God’s unfailing love to share with people. She became familiar with the true meaning of the bible and God’s providence. God’s providence is how he cares and watches over her during the life’s passage. In “To the University of Cambridge, in New England”, she is able to write to the college students about the main goals. Wheatley heavily emphasizes to them that they should not get so wrapped up in their schoolwork and studies that it hinders their personal relationship with God. By having a balance in schooling and daily walk with God, it will help the student’s life more efficiently than just doing one action. The author’s main point in her poetry
Readers unfamiliar with Phillis Wheatley may wonder of her background and who she was in particular to be able to gain rights to be mentioned in early American literature. Wheatley was born in 1753 and was captured by Africans, and sold to an American family known as the Wheatley’s. She quickly became a member of the Wheatley family, living in the home, and being tutored on reading and writing.
Wheatley was born in West Africa around 1750, and was captured when she was 7. John Wheatley purchased Phillis for his wife, Susanna; together they taught Phillis how to read and write, and as early as 12, Phillis was writing poetry and her first poem had been published. Wheatley’s poems implicitly advocated for racial equality, while condemning slavery. Her work received some negative feedback from political figureheads, such as Thomas Jefferson. White America classified a human as having the ability to read, write, and reason; therefore, leaving no room for the uneducated Africans, seeing Africans as nonhuman. Jefferson claimed Wheatley’s work was not literature because the moment he admitted Wheatley’s work was indeed literature, he would have had to admit she was a human being. The way Phillis Wheatley handled the adversity she faced is admirable. Wheatley definitely impacted American history, and “owes her place in history to advocates of inequality” (Young 1999
Wheatley starts the poem in a very dark place when she mentions the word “benighted,” (Line 2) as if the darkness has disappeared from her life once she met mercy. Since the poem was written in the late 1700’s the reader can assume that she was in the darkness in her homeland Senegal because she as a slave. Once she was brought to America by mercy she is no longer in the dark. The word benighted is to be overtaken by darkness, so this means that the speaker was benighted when she lived in a place where they did not follow certain religious beliefs as the rest of the world. The speaker’s soul is in a dark place and when she was brought to America and found God, she was enlightened. Another example of how Wheatley references color and darkness is line six in the poem “Their colour is a diabolic die,” (Line 6) this is the only sentence in the poem that has quotation marks so the readers can assume that she quoted someone. This could also mean that she is referring to a phy...
Throughout the poem, “To the University of Cambridge, in New England”, Phyllis Wheatley suggest that she accepted the colonial idea of slavery, by first describing her captivity, even though this poem has a subversive double meaning that has sent an anti-slavery message. Wheatley’s choice of words indicates that her directed audience was educated at a sophisticated level because of the language chosen. Her audience was assumingly also familiar with the bible because of the religious references used. The bible was used as a reference because of its accessibility. Wheatley uses religious references to subversively warn her readers about slavery and its repercussions and to challenge her reader’s morals.
The overall themes of this poem are beauty, love, and destiny. The speaker constantly discusses beautiful things and how they can help us. Love can be felt throughout the entire poem. In the first stanza, the speaker verbalizes how he “came with love of the race.” He also expresses love for the beautiful things around him. The theme destiny can be seen in the third stanza when the speaker talks about staying on course. It can also be identified in the last stanza when he describes something inevitable that was about to
On Being Brought from Africa to America, Wheatley’s short poem reads powerfully. How could one possibly breeze past such a sharply positioned argument which directly places her race front and center?
Phillis Wheatley, a poet of early modern poetry discloses a sonnet to Scipio Moorhead labeled To S.M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works. The start of Wheatley life was being purchased by a white family and shipped off to Boston. She was an extremely intelligent child that was beginning to learn how to read, write and how to strongly connect to the Bible. When knowing the background of this poet, we realize first-hand how her childhood impacted her poetry. This piece of poetry was in the point of view of first person. Many poets use a type of sound devices or figurative language to enhance their message within. Wheatley introduces a sound device known as end rhyme as a way of intensifying the experience to the reader. The poet stated, “When first thy pencil did those beauties give, and breathing figures learnt from thee to live” (409) uses end rhyme to give connection between those two lines. My outsight on these two lines would be summarized as the poet trying to interpret the beautiful people the artist has drawn in her own words. Also, Wheatley communicates figurative language into this poem by using the several metaphors to put emphasis on her writing. The metaphor heavily absorbed by me would be, “Whose twice six gates on radiant hinges ring: Celestial Salem blooms in endless spring” (410) creating an image of Heaven.
Shields, John C. (Eds.). (1988). The Collected Works of Phillis Wheatley. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc.
O?Neale, Sondra A. "Phillis Wheatley." Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 31: American Colonial Writers, 1735-1781. Ed. Emory Elliot. Princeton: Gale, 1984. 260-267.
She makes you think about the wrong doings that were going on in this time period. It was very brave of her to talk about the things that she talked about especially while being a slave. During this time period she probably faced a lot of criticism of her works and many believed that someone was writing her poems for her because they were so good and it was uncommon for a black lady to write a poem as well as she did. As a young black lady who has to go through slavery and other adversities this was a very hard time period for them but Wheatley stood strong and followed in what she believed in. She fought for equality and freedom for African American men and women.
Here she is depicting her move of physically being conveyed from her homeland to America. The pagan land that Wheatley is talking about is Senegal, Africa. She was abducted when she was about 8 years old around 1753. This is a pivotal time in her life because life as she know it is about to change. She was separated from her family, and was disconnected from her culture. The pagan land is symbolic in this poem because it indicated the struggle and tragedy of being taken from her homeland and introduced to a new world. Wheatley, in addition to thousands of other slaves brought their culture such as their rituals and languages, trades, and ideas to America. Their way of life from their “pagan” land taught the how to survive in the most server conditions. Wheatley’s homeland didn’t only give her and taught her to survive, but it also molded her into the strong women she
Barnstone, Aliki, and Willis Barnstone. A book of women poets. New York: Schocken Books, 1980. Print.
The excerpt about Phyllis Wheatly’s philosophical views stood out to me. Although I am unsure as to whether I interpreted the poem accurately, the ideas were such which could easily be related to in this century’s daily life.
personal side. Any poem or work of literature can be interpreted different ways by different people but the author’s intention when writing should not be overlooked. These true intentions of who this poem is truly directed at and about lies with one person, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.