The later poem exhibits an even greater level of complexity and authorial control, with Wheatley manipulating her audience by even more covert means. According to "The American Crisis", God will aid the colonists and not aid the king of England because. She asks that they remember that anyone, no matter their skin color, can be said by God. window.__mirage2 = {petok:"cajhZ6VFWaUJG3veQ.det3ab.5UanemT4_W4vp5lfYs-86400-0"}; While it is true that her very ability to write such a poem defended her race against Jefferson's charge that black people were not intelligent enough to create poetry, an even worse charge for Wheatley would have been the association of the black race with unredeemable evilthe charge that the black race had no souls to save. It is organized into four couplets, which are two rhymed lines of verse. To unlock this lesson you must be a Study.com Member. The difficulties she may have encountered in America are nothing to her, compared to possibly having remained unsaved. Being made a slave is one thing, but having white Christians call black a diabolic dye, suggesting that black people are black because they're evil, is something else entirely. This condition ironically coexisted with strong antislavery sentiment among the Christian Evangelical and Whig populations of the city, such as the Wheatleys, who themselves were slaveholders. On Being Brought from Africa to America by Phillis Wheatley is a simple poem about the power of Christianity to bring people to salvation. Thus, in order to participate fully in the meaning of the poem, the audience must reject the false authority of the "some," an authority now associated with racism and hypocrisy, and accept instead the authority that the speaker represents, an authority based on the tenets of Christianity. More on Wheatley's work from PBS, including illustrations of her poems and a portraitof the poet herself. The soul, which is not a physical object, cannot be overwhelmed by darkness or night. Source: William J. Scheick, "Phillis Wheatley's Appropriation of Isaiah," in Early American Literature, Vol. These miracles continue still with Phillis's figurative children, black . Endnotes. The book includes a portrait of Wheatley and a preface where 17 notable Boston citizens verified that the work was indeed written by a Black woman. Her biblically authorized claim that the offspring of Cain "may be refin'd" to "join th' angelic train" transmutes into her self-authorized artistry, in which her desire to raise Cain about the prejudices against her race is refined into the ministerial "angelic train" (the biblical and artistic train of thought) of her poem. Later rebellions in the South were often fostered by black Christian ministers, a tradition that was epitomized by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s civil rights movement. 'Twas mercy brought me from my Wheatley, however, is asking Christians to judge her and her poetry, for she is indeed one of them, if they adhere to the doctrines of their own religion, which preaches Christ's universal message of brotherhood and salvation. 372-73. Saying it feels like saying "disperse." At the same time, our ordinary response to hearing it is in the mind's eye; we see it - the scattering of one thing into many. The final word train not only refers to the retinue of the divinely chosen but also to how these chosen are trained, "Taught to understand." Find related themes, quotes, symbols, characters, and more. In the poem, she gives thanks for having been brought to America, where she was raised to be a Christian. The opening sentiments would have been easily appreciated by Wheatley's contemporary white audience, but the last four lines exhorted them to reflect on their assumptions about the black race. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., claims in The Trials of Phillis Wheatley that Boston contained about a thousand African Americans out of a population of 15,520. There was a shallop floating on the Wye, among the gray rocks and leafy woods of Chepstow. She then talks about how "some" people view those with darker skin and African heritage, "Negros black as Cain," scornfully. Once again, Wheatley co-opts the rhetoric of the other. These were pre-Revolutionary days, and Wheatley imbibed the excitement of the era, recording the Boston Massacre in a 1770 poem. In this poem, Wheatley posits that all people, from all races, can be saved by Christianity. How do her concerns differ or converge with other black authors? Have a specific question about this poem? Africa, the physical continent, cannot be pagan. Phillis Wheatley. themes in this piece are religion, freedom, and equality, https://poemanalysis.com/phillis-wheatley/on-being-brought-from-africa-to-america/, Poems covered in the Educational Syllabus. Examples Of Figurative Language In Letters To Birmingham. She adds that in case he wonders why she loves freedom, it is because she was kidnapped from her native Africa and thinks of the suffering of her parents. 253 Words2 Pages. Many readers today are offended by this line as making Africans sound too dull or brainwashed by religion to realize the severity of their plight in America. That there's a God, that there's a A discussionof Phillis Wheatley's controversial status within the African American community. She describes those Christian people with African heritage as being "refin'd" and that they will "join th' angelic train.". Suddenly, the audience is given an opportunity to view racism from a new perspective, and to either accept or reject this new ideological position. As such, though she inherited the Puritan sense of original sin and resignation in death, she focuses on the element of comfort for the bereaved. In fact, although the lines of the first quatrain in "On Being Brought from Africa to America" are usually interpreted as celebrating the mercy of her white captors, they are more accurately read as celebrating the mercy of God for delivering her from sin. She took the surname of this man, as was the tradition, but her first name came from the slave ship The Phillis, which brought her to America. Accordingly, Wheatley's persona in "On Being Brought from Africa to America" qualifies the critical complaints that her poetry is imitative, inadequate, and unmilitant (e.g., Collins; Richmond 54-66); her persona resists the conclusion that her poetry shows a resort to scripture in lieu of imagination (Ogude); and her persona suggests that her religious poetry may be compatible with her political writings (e.g., Akers; Burroughs). In this sense, white and black people are utterly equal before God, whose authority transcends the paltry earthly authorities who have argued for the inequality of the two races. For example: land/understandCain/train. Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain. Line 4 goes on to further illustrate how ignorant Wheatley was before coming to America: she did not even know enough to seek the redemption of her soul. Further, because the membership of the "some" is not specified (aside from their common attitude), the audience is not automatically classified as belonging with them. Western notions of race were still evolving. 5Some view our sable race with scornful eye. 1, edited by Nina Baym, Norton, 1998, p. 825. From this perspective, Africans were living in darkness. This is a metaphor. In "On Being Brought from Africa to America" Wheatley alludes twice to Isaiah to refute stereotypical readings of skin color; she interprets these passages to refer to the mutual spiritual benightedness of both races, as equal diabolically-dyed descendants of Cain. It was written by a black woman who was enslaved. This question was discussed by the Founding Fathers and the first American citizens as well as by people in Europe. She was in a sinful and ignorant state, not knowing God or Christ. First, the reader can imagine how it feels to hear a comment like that. She was born in West Africa circa 1753, and thus she was only a few years younger than James Madison. In this poem Wheatley gives her white readers argumentative and artistic proof; and she gives her black readers an example of how to appropriate biblical ground to self-empower their similar development of religious and cultural refinement. Though lauded in her own day for overcoming the then unimaginable boundaries of race, slavery, and gender, by the twentieth century Wheatley was vilified, primarily for her poem "On Being Brought from Africa to America." May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train. She grew increasingly critical of slavery and wrote several letters in opposition to it. The effect is to place the "some" in a degraded position, one they have created for themselves through their un-Christian hypocrisy. WikiProject Linguistics may be able to help recruit an expert. This is an eight-line poem written in iambic pentameter. Merriam-Webster defines a pagan as "a person holding religious beliefs other than those of the main world religions." POEM TEXT Boston, Massachusetts 1'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land. Not an adoring one, but a fair one. This means that each line, with only a couple of questionable examples, is made up of five sets of two beats. Recently, critics like James Levernier have tried to provide a more balanced view of Wheatley's achievement by studying her style within its historical context. This color, the speaker says, may think is a sign of the devil. 1, 2002, pp. Alliteration is a common and useful device that helps to increase the rhythm of the poem. While it is a short poem a lot of information can be taken away from it. On Virtue. While the use of italics for "Pagan" and "Savior" may have been a printer's decision rather than Wheatley's, the words are also connected through their position in their respective lines and through metric emphasis. As the first African American woman . Phillis Wheatley was born in Gambia, Africa, in 1753. Her rhetoric has the effect of merging the female with the male, the white with the black, the Christian with the Pagan. The poem's rhyme scheme is AABBCCDD and is organized into four couplets, which are paired lines of rhymed verse. This was the legacy of philosophers such as John Locke who argued against absolute monarchy, saying that government should be a social contract with the people; if the people are not being served, they have a right to rebel. Form two groups and hold a debate on the topic. During his teaching career, he won two Fulbright professorships. There is a good example of an allusion in the last lines when the poet refers to Cain. It also uses figurative language, which makes meaning by asking the reader to understand something because of its relation to some other thing, action, or image. This failed due to doubt that a slave could write poetry. In lieu of an open declaration connecting the Savior of all men and the African American population, one which might cause an adverse reaction in the yet-to-be-persuaded, Wheatley relies on indirection and the principle of association. She begin the poem with establishing her experience with slavery as a beneficial thing to her life. In the last line of this poem, she asserts that the black race may, like any other branch of humanity, be saved and rise to a heavenly fate. While Wheatley included some traditional elements of the elegy, or praise for the dead, in "On Being Brought from Africa to America," she primarily combines sermon and meditation techniques in the poem. Structure. PDF. One result is that, from the outset, Wheatley allows the audience to be positioned in the role of benefactor as opposed to oppressor, creating an avenue for the ideological reversal the poem enacts. The very distinctions that the "some" have created now work against them. In this instance, however, she uses the very argument that has been used to justify the existence of black slavery to argue against it: the connection between Africans and Cain, the murderer of Abel. The first allusion occurs in the word refin'd. Her choice of pronoun might be a subtle allusion to ownership of black slaves by whites, but it also implies "ownership" in a more communal and spiritual sense. Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., "Phillis Wheatley and the Nature of the Negro," in Critical Essays on Phillis Wheatley, edited by William H. Robinson, G. K. Hall, 1982, pp. At the same time, she touches on the prejudice many Christians had that heathens had no souls. As Wheatley pertinently wrote in "On Imagination" (1773), which similarly mingles religious and aesthetic refinements, she aimed to embody "blooming graces" in the "triumph of [her] song" (Mason 78). On this note, the speaker segues into the second stanza, having laid out her ("Christian") position and established the source of her rhetorical authority. Through her rhetoric of performed ideology, Wheatley revises the implied meaning of the word Christian to include African Americans. These lines can be read to say that ChristiansWheatley uses the term Christians to refer to the white raceshould remember that the black race is also a recipient of spiritual refinement; but these same lines can also be read to suggest that Christians should remember that in a spiritual sense both white and black people are the sin-darkened descendants of Cain. Educated and enslaved in the household of . In the following essay, Scheick argues that in "On Being Brought from Africa to America," Wheatleyrelies on biblical allusions to erase the difference between the races. The Wheatleys noticed Phillis's keen intelligence and educated her alongside their own children. The Quakers were among the first to champion the abolition of slavery. The European colonization of the Americas inspired a desire for cheap labor for the development of the land. 1-13. Another thing that a reader will notice is the meter of this poem. The poem On Being Brought from Africa to America by Phillis Wheatley is a poetic representation of dark period in American history when slave trade was prominent in society. On the other hand, by bringing up Cain, she confronts the popular European idea that the black race sprang from Cain, who murdered his brother Abel and was punished by having a mark put on him as an outcast. The speaker of this poem says that her abduction from Africa and subsequent enslavement in America was an act of mercy, in that it allowed her to learn about Christianity and ultimately be saved. She was taught theology, English, Latin, Greek, mythology, literature, geography, and astronomy. The poem was "On Being Brought from Africa to America," written by a 14-year-old Phillis in the late 18th century. Following her previous rhetorical clues, the only ones who can accept the title of "Christian" are those who have made the decision not to be part of the "some" and to admit that "Negroes / May be refin'd and join th' angelic train" (7-8). Wheatley goes on to say that when she was in Africa, she knew neither about the existence of God nor the need of a savior. While ostensibly about the fate of those black Christians who see the light and are saved, the final line in "On Being Brought From Africa to America" is also a reminder to the members of her audience about their own fate should they choose unwisely.