Compare And Contrast Poem By Tyler Family Papers

Chase Clark

Dr. Jane Wessel

English 2330

3 March 2018

The Plea for Freedom The poems “The Negro’s Complaint” by William Cowper and “On Sugar” by the Tyler Family Papers gives us a perspective on pain and suffering that every slave experienced, and although these poems are different in perspective, both of them speak in a dark emotional tone by questioning the white slave owners if what they are doing is morally justified. These two poems will be compared and contrasted to each other, and then converge to make the reader feel immoral and guilty. The slave within each poem plead together to the reader to look at the slaves equally to them, such as if their color did not exist. While comparing the tactics of these two poems, you must imagine

We can see in both of the poems, the suffering is all attributed to the hunger for wealth through the sale of sugar that the slaves produce. This cash crop is the primary theme in “On Sugar”, it’s showing a viewpoint of the slave as he refuses to eat what his brothers and sisters were forced to work for. It begins with the bold remark, “Go guilty, tho’ seducing food” (Tyler, line 1), and four lines down clarifies with the pair of lines, “To me thy tempting white appears / Steep’d in a thousand Negros tears” (Tyler, lines 5-6). Tyler conveys the sugar as repulsive due to the nature of its production, but on the other hand it ironically describes it as ‘seducing’. The slaves had to suffer through the forced labor of working in the sugar farms and refineries, even though the actual product is well known to be enjoyed by those who eat it. The way the author shows this relation is with the repetitive line throughout the poem saying that the sugar is “Purchas’d by many a brothers blood” (Tyler, lines 2, 18,

However, the take away at the end of both poems is the guilt that is felt within the heart of the reader. “On Sugar” conveys this guilt as an implicit question that is asked in a rhetorical way. Throughout the poem, you listen to the author explain why he shall not eat the sugar that he has the full ability to do. Rather, he finds the journey the sugar took through the blood and tears through the working slaves to be repulsive. This takes ahold of the reader’s conscious by letting them ask themselves if they should do the same. Eating the sugar would be a supportive action of slavery, therefore would support the dark and violent truth that slavery upholds. This correlates with the last two lines of the poem, “And Bless the Day I scorn’d the food / Purchas’d by many a Brothers blood”. (Tyler lines