Blog Post #4

On Being Brought from Africa to America

By Phillis Wheatley

 

'TWAS mercy brought me from my Pagan land,

Taught my benighted soul to understand

That there's a God, that there's a Savior too:

Once I redemption neither sought nor knew,

Some view our sable race with scornful eye,

"Their color is a diabolic die."

Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain,

May be refined, and join th' angelic train.

 

In Wheatley's poem, she begins out by speaking of slavery in a positive light expressing that it is what brought her to the lord. She talks about feeling "benighted" which I looked up and found that what she meant by this which was that she was trying to get across to the reader that she felt overtaken by the darkness explaining her skin color to be equal to her original ignorance of the Christian lifestyle she now understands.  I loved the poem and looked up many interpretations of it which all expressed that she found her slavery as a liberating experience instead of looking back on it in a negative light.  I liked this a lot because experiencing something so horrific is never easy but to make something so great out of it and use the experience as a means of making the rest of your life amazing then the more power to Wheatley, in my opinion.  When the people stole her as a slave they stole her power of her own life and in not allowing them to dictate the rest of her life is taking this power back in a sense.  She talks about the "mercy" as her journey with slavery and being a black female but then also with being a Christian.  In the fifth line of the poem Wheatley says "some view our sable race with scornful eye" which I think she's saying that she's not ignorant to how many people view black, female, slaves but urging the reader to see more than what is on the surface and look deeper into who these people are and where they have come from.  The attitude expressed in the poem is important because she has such positivity and hope and it's so blatant throughout the poem which is so liberating.  I really liked this poem and learning a little bit about Phillis Wheatley along with her other poems.