The readings from week five portray and consist of various authors narratively explaining their personal journeys and experiences through life. In particular, the works of Phillis Wheatley and Frederick Douglass. Of all the works of these two famous slaves, the two works that stood out the most were On Being Brought From Africa to America, by Wheatley, alongside the work My Bondage and My Freedom, by Douglass which were both similar and different for valuable reasons.
Wheatley was a female African American who wrote poems, and was the first woman and African American to come out with a book of poems. Her work On Being Brought for Africa to America is written with her as the speaker and the author. She describes how she is thankful to be removed from Africa and brought to America because being captured and sold as a slave introduced her to God/Christianity. She is grateful because she says “Twas mercy [that] brought me from my pagan land,” meaning it was God who delivered her from a country that focused on pagan traditions. Wheatley conveys a message in lines 5-8: “Some view our view our sable race with scornful eye,/‘Their color is a diabolical dye.’/Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain,/May be refined and join the angelic train.” that if God can save her, as a black woman, then He can save anyone (Gustafson 789); she also states it is hypocritical of the white man to look down on a group of God’s people just for being a …show more content…
He was born into slavery in 1801 on the Eastern Shore of Maryland who he wrote adamantly about civil rights and challenged the founding principles of the United States of America, particularly the Declaration of Independence. In his work My Bondange and My Freedom, he outlines his life as both a free man and a slave. The particular excerpt in the textbook only includes the section about his life as a slave. Douglass conveys many key points and ideas through this
Wheatley was a female African American who wrote poems, and was the first woman and African American to come out with a book of poems. Her work On Being Brought for Africa to America is written with her as the speaker and the author. She describes how she is thankful to be removed from Africa and brought to America because being captured and sold as a slave introduced her to God/Christianity. She is grateful because she says “Twas mercy [that] brought me from my pagan land,” meaning it was God who delivered her from a country that focused on pagan traditions. Wheatley conveys a message in lines 5-8: “Some view our view our sable race with scornful eye,/‘Their color is a diabolical dye.’/Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain,/May be refined and join the angelic train.” that if God can save her, as a black woman, then He can save anyone (Gustafson 789); she also states it is hypocritical of the white man to look down on a group of God’s people just for being a …show more content…
He was born into slavery in 1801 on the Eastern Shore of Maryland who he wrote adamantly about civil rights and challenged the founding principles of the United States of America, particularly the Declaration of Independence. In his work My Bondange and My Freedom, he outlines his life as both a free man and a slave. The particular excerpt in the textbook only includes the section about his life as a slave. Douglass conveys many key points and ideas through this