Blog #2 Close Read

The text that I chose to do a close read on was Phillis Wheatley’s “On Being Brought From Africa to America”.  One of the most important things that I noticed was the author herself was a slave so she is able to give a first hand perspective on the topic of being taken from Africa and sold into slavery. In the poem Wheatley uses an AABBCCDD rhyme structure. In line 1 she says that “mercy brought me from my pagan land.” which is in line with the accepted notion at the time that by enslaving Africans and taking them from their homeland they were being saved from a savage life. Wheatley reinforces this point in a few other lines such as in line 2 when she says “taught my benighted soul to understand…”. Wheatley also shows how she was treated by others because of the color of her skin in lines 5 and 6, “Some view of sable race with scornful eye, ‘their colour is a diabolical die'”. You can also see how much Christianity played a part in a slave’s life. As I stated previously she says she was taken from a pagan land (line 1), she also talks about how she was taught that “there’s a God…there’s a Saviour too” (line 4).  She continues the Christian theme in the final two lines of the poem where she talks about how, despite what those around here (specifically she calls them Christians), people with “skins black as Cain” can also enter Heaven.

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