Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Phillis Wheatley

Amanda Onalaja

September 15, 2009

Pd. 2 – Ms. Brown

Phillis Wheatley grew up as a very privileged woman of her time. Not only was she female and African American, she was highly intelligent. She was born into slavery and sold to John and Susannah Wheatley. With the Wheatley’s she experienced a surreal form of slavery, she was accepted and raised as one of the Wheatley’s own children. She developed quickly with reading and writing. Wheatley was a truly an influential person as her admirers saw in her “the triumph of human spirit over the circumstances of birth”. She is considerable the first African American to publish book. However, her gifts were questioned as John Wheatley, John Hancock, and others had to prove her originality, “[Phillis] had been examined and thought qualified to write them”.

Not only was she a literary genius, but Wheatley was a wise woman; commenting on the issues of slavery, “It does not take a philosopher to see that the exercise of slavery cannot be reconciled with a principle that God has implanted in every human breast, “Love of Freedom””. This quote is an appeal to pathos and ethos. God is her credited source; slavery can’t co-inhabit with man because God designed man to be free. It’s an appeal to logos because she uses imagery to paint a picture of a man torn between society’s ways and the natural way of God. Wheatley didn’t seem to be an abolitionist, but she made her views on slavery clear with another passage from a poem, “Such, such my case. And can I then but pray/others may never feel tyrannic sway”. The “tyranny” she speaks of is oppression, but she uses a word associated with evil people like despots and villains. Wheatley, however, doesn’t always sing the praises of her roots.

In “On Being Brought from Africa to America” an original poem, there is a patronizing yet saccharine tone to it. “… Some view our sable race with scornful eye, ‘Their color is a diabolical dye’. Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain, may be refined and join angelic train”. Wheatley refers to Negroes as descendants of the biblical Cain, those who are supposedly cursed for his crime, but she sounds patronizing in the sense that she emphasizes her audience by calling them “Christians”, subtly hinting that they should think in pious fashion. In a sense the Negro Christian and White Christian share a common bond which only Wheatley knows or seems to acknowledge. Wheatley displays distaste for oppression in more ways than just racism. In her poem “To His Excellency General Washington”, she expresses her anticipation of victory in freeing the colonies from England. She envisions victory even though in this period, victory leaned on the side of Britain.

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