Phillis Wheatley was born in Senegal, West Africa in 1753. She was kidnapped in 1761 at age eight and bought by John Wheatley so she could serve his wife Susan. Due to the fact that Phillis was extremely intelligent and a fast learner Susan did not train her to be her servant. Phillis was taught English, Latin, and Greek, and other subjects including the Bible. She slowly became a part of the Wheatley family. Thanks to the lessons that Phillips received she started writing poems, one of the poems she is known for is “Being Brought from Africa to America.” In this poem Phillis Wheatley uses some poetic devices such as similes, metaphors, hyperboles to illustrate color and darkness, multiple meanings of words, and the relationship between skin tone and salvation.
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...
... middle of paper ...
...o has ever lived in darkness can be revived by this angelic train or by the famous mercy whom will bring light into your dark world. Wheatley makes a clear point that all people, despite their color can be saved.
As a final point, Phillis Wheatley may have been bought a slave but she never lost faith and ended up being one of the best known poets in the early nineteenth century. This poem illustrates how she was living in darkness in Senegal, West Africa and because of slavery she was bought and brought to America. In this poem “On Being Brought from Africa to America,” Wheatley uses poetic devices such as similes, metaphors, hyperboles to illustrate color and darkness, multiple meanings of words, and the relationship between skin tone and salvation. This poem seems to be a narrative of her life and how slavery might have been the best thing that happened to her.
Frederick Douglass’s memoir, “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave” describes Douglass’s life as a slave who through a multitude of experiences, reaches his path to freedom. He inherently has a life very disparate to that of a traditional slave. Through good fortune Douglass is able to escape the clutches of back-breaking agricultural work, and instead is given away as a personal slave. While working for the Auld family he receives a somewhat un-strenuous experience, in which he is able to clandestinely become literate. Douglass’s autobiography is a story in which the savior and key to salvation does not take physical form, but lies in literacy. In this memoir, Douglass goes through a process of understanding, in
Equiano worked with British abolitionists to placate the conditions of poor black people by settling them in the new British West African colonies. Whereas, Wheatley’s works provided demonstrable evidence of reason, which was previously considered absent among African slaves. In her poem “On the Death of the Rev. George Whitefield”, Phillis Wheatley acclaims that the Africans “shall be sons, and kings, and priests to God.” The Reverend Alexander Crummell educated African Americans; later, he moved to Liberia as a missionary
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
As the poem starts out, Wheatley describes being taken from her “native shore” to “the land of errors.” Her native shore was the western coast of Africa, and she was taken to the “land of errors” which represents America. America is seen in her eyes as the land of errors because of slavery. Wheatley is acknowledging right off the bat that slavery is wrong. Wheatley then goes on and references the “Egyptian gloom” which is italicized. The italicization forces the readers to focus and reflect on “Egyptian” and it’s possible
To further analyze a more spoiled African American of the time, Phillis Wheatley did address the issues of her race as much as Sojourner Truth did. Wheatley mainly wrote “to Whites, for Whites and generally in the Euro-American tradition at that time” (Jamison 408). Her content focused on Christianity, morality, virtue, and other non-African-American-related topics. Her poetry has an underlying attitude of a white, not an African American. She shares the same views and attitude as a Caucasian, therefore she is part of African American literature because she was born into it, but she did not share the particular views and struggles of the African American population. She was heavily praised, because it was not expected from an African such as herself, although her upbringing should be considered. Some white men admired her work, because it was more than
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.
Wheatley, Phillis. Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. New York: AMS Press, 1976. Rpt. of Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. Philadelphia, 1786.
The poetry of Phillis Wheatley is crafted in such a manner that she is able to create a specific aim for each poem, and achieve that aim by manipulating her position as the speaker. As a slave, she was cautious to cross any lines with her proclamations, but was able to get her point across by humbling her own position. In religious or elegiac matters, however, she seemed to consider herself to be an authority. Two of her poems, the panegyric “To MAECENAS” and the elegy “On the Death of a young Lady of Five Years of Age,” display Wheatley’s general consistency in form, but also her intelligence, versatility, and ability to adapt her position in order to achieve her goals.
The figurative language that she uses in this poem is assonance and alliteration. In line 10 “shanty-fied shotgun is an example of alliteration (two words with the same constant sound). “ In the first stanza where it talks about her skin tone, “light bright…white” (3-4) is an example of assonance because there’s a rhyme scheme in those
Phillis Wheatley overcame extreme obstacles, such as racism and sexism, to become one of the most acclaimed poets in the 18th Century. Her works are characterized by religious and moral backgrounds, which are due to the extensive education of religion she received. In this sense, her poems also fit into American Poetry. However, she differs in the way that she is a black woman whose writings tackle greater subjects while incorporating her moral standpoint. By developing her writing, she began speaking out against injustices that she faced and, consequently, gave way to authors such as Gwendolyn Brooks and Countee Cullen.
Little girl assumes that those men in white are sent by God, therefore, she links them with an angel. This stanza shows a faith and hope for little girl with new understanding of world who born in mixed race family and living in racist area, such a Mississippi during that time and suffering with a lifestyle because she was mixed. This has an impact on all her poems that comes from Native Guard. As Trethewey says, “I think I always understood myself as somehow a part of history. My understanding had to do with my very existence” (qtd.
The symbolism of the poem starts with a light picture: "enthron'd in domains of light." This picture erects the rest of the lyric to be sure in regards to its main figure and activity based upon the beginning reference to light. The symbolism enlightens the message of the lyric - the flexibility of the provinces from Britain. As another foundation, the light of the world was upon the America's. Moreover, Wheatley personifies freedom and America as a goddess Columbia, which means the female goddess of liberty, justice, and new life (American dream). By using “Columbia” with the meaning of goddess, Wheatley attempts to accomplish the objectives of the American Revolution. The writer uses the same diction and style when she is referring to England as “Britannia” (line 35). This way she wants to give a female side of England. Personification can be found also in many other parts of the poem such as in lines 29-34, Wheatley refers to the French and Indian War as evidence of what Columbia's rage can do.
The clash between racial reality and idea is what is artistically shown in “on being brought from Africa to America”. Wheatley is a subtle rebel. At the beginning of her poem she shows thanks for being enslaved because it brought happiness to her life in finding Christianity, but as time goes by we start to see the true tone of Wheatley, which clearly show in the last two lines of the poem, now Wheatley begins to take a big position of power as if she already has the attention of the reader. Wheatley continues by saying that Africans may not be perfect but the Christians who enslave human beings aren’t