Wheatley radiates an idea from her poem that she was too fearful of her owner to go for a more authentic version of events, suggested by the line “twas mercy” (page 764). The poem mimics the way that most white people would have felt about slavery at the time which hints to a modern reader that her literature was actually used as a survival tool in order to keep her owner content; consequently not receiving any brutal punishments that are envisioned in other slave narratives such as Equiano who saw slaves being “cut” and “mangled” and also in narratives such as Rowlandson who similarly looks to religion as a saviour. Rowlandson, the wife of a minister, describes the torture that slaves went through in being captured such as “split open his bowels”. Rowlandson uses her narrative to give a brutal account to her readers, who were white in majority, so that the truth could be visualised and possibly cause a revolution. However not all of Rowlandson’s narrative is authentic, she includes bible references as well as quotes which would have been edited in much later than the time at which it was written: “By the rivers of Babylon… remembered Zion” (page
Wheatley radiates an idea from her poem that she was too fearful of her owner to go for a more authentic version of events, suggested by the line “twas mercy” (page 764). The poem mimics the way that most white people would have felt about slavery at the time which hints to a modern reader that her literature was actually used as a survival tool in order to keep her owner content; consequently not receiving any brutal punishments that are envisioned in other slave narratives such as Equiano who saw slaves being “cut” and “mangled” and also in narratives such as Rowlandson who similarly looks to religion as a saviour. Rowlandson, the wife of a minister, describes the torture that slaves went through in being captured such as “split open his bowels”. Rowlandson uses her narrative to give a brutal account to her readers, who were white in majority, so that the truth could be visualised and possibly cause a revolution. However not all of Rowlandson’s narrative is authentic, she includes bible references as well as quotes which would have been edited in much later than the time at which it was written: “By the rivers of Babylon… remembered Zion” (page