Phillis Wheatley's Poem

Phillis Wheatley recognized that white people justified their immoral actions by arguing that they’re saving their slaves by converting them to Christianity. Wheatley decided to take her observations and turn it into the poem, “On Being Brought from Africa to America”. In this poem, the speaker is an educated slave who uses diction to mock and accuse highly educated Americans by pretending that she agrees with her target audience’s viewpoints. Wheatley develops the themes of slave conversion and racism using an ironic and accusatory tone. Using an ironic tone, Wheatley develops the theme of slave conversion to Christianity. For example, “‘Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land/ Taught my benighted soul to understand”. In this context, Wheatley uses benighted to mean ignorant and mercy to …show more content…
For instance, “Some view our sable race with scornful eye/ ‘Their colour is a diabolic dye.’” In this quote, the author is stating that white people view Africans as lesser and evil. In this passage, the words sable and diabolic mean uncivilized and demonic, respectively. The word choice emphasizes how the pigment of a black person’s skin made some think of Africans as uncivilized and demonic. The speaker is accusing white people of having these beliefs and being racist. This shows that the theme of racism is portrayed by Wheatley’s accusatory tone. Wheatley also uses an accusatory tone to discuss racism in the second part of the stanza, “Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain/ May be refin’d and join the angelic train.” Wheatley is comparing Africans to Cain, the first person to commit murder according to the Bible. Cain is a symbol of evil and Wheatley proceeded to say that there’s a way to fix Africans’ evil nature by converting them to Christianity. By using an accusatory tone, Wheatley calls out white Americans for being racist and for having the belief that Africans are evil by