Analysis Of On Being Brought From Africa To America

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In both the poem “On Being Brought from Africa to America” by Phillis Wheatley and Toni Morrison 's novel A Mercy, there are white saviors for black slaves. Each savior is characterized differently, yet each carries a child away from a life of typical slavery. Each slave story depicts a different meaning of life as a slave and ultimately what it means for a free, white person to provide salvation for an enslaved African American. The speaker of “On Being Brought from Africa to America” conveys her point through irony when referencing her so-called savior. The author of the poem, slave-girl Phillis Wheatley, is thought to be embodied by the speaker. This girl, the voice of the poem, states “Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land… there 's a God...there’s a Saviour too” (1-3). The use of the rhetorical distinction between god and saviour to indicates that the owners of the speaker are supposed to be her saviors since they bought her as their slave, raised her in Western culture, and taught her how to read and write. While these special circumstances indeed did elevate her above other slaves, the speaker’s subversive disdain shows us that this “mercy” has cost her too. She was robbed of her family, her heritage, and ultimately a life of freedom and equality. In A Mercy, the main savior character, Jacob …show more content…

While both saviors give the speaker a chance to live an atypical and slightly more privileged life, the speaker in “On Being Brought from Africa to America” is more acutely aware of the disadvantages of her pseudo-salvation. Florens and the speaker of the poem are both removed from one situation and placed into another, the key difference is that the removal of Florens is seen as a mercy by the audience, while the speaker of “On Being Brought from Africa to America” notices the inequality faced by her peers and she longs for the truest mercy of

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