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Phillis Wheatley On Being Brought From Africa To America Analysis

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Phillis Wheatley's "On Being Brought from Africa to America" is dated in 1773, immediately a reader can make an assumption based on the title that the poem is about slavery and someone who has come to the new continent as a slave. The author feels that the Africans should be pleased that they were brought from Africa to America and saved from their Pagan land (Wheatley). The author makes it clear in the first four lines of the poem that being brought from Africa to a new continent as slaves allowed them to find their god and their entry into Christianity as hope for themselves (Explanation of: 'On Being Brought From Africa to America' by Phillis Wheatley). Wheatley even stated in her poem that "taught my benighted soul to understand That there's
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• "On Being Brought from Africa to America," Wheatley applauds the leniency of God for singling her out for recovery. Such a significant number of on the planet don't know God or Christ. The word "benighted" is an intriguing one: it signifies "overtaken by night or darkness" or "being in a condition of good or scholarly haziness.” She likewise utilizes the expression "mercy brought me" and the title "on being brought" - deftly down-playing the savagery of the capturing of a tyke and the voyage on a slave transport, in order to not appear a perilous pundit of subjugation, but rather in the meantime crediting not the slave exchange, but rather (divine) kindness with the demonstration. This could be perused as denying the ability to those people who seized her and subjected her to the voyage and to her consequent deal and accommodation.

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To understand the real meaning of a literary work, we need to look into the meaning of each word and why the author has chosen these particular words and not different ones. Close reading of literary works helps us understand the author’s thinking and understanding of the time they lied in. One of the American poet and author of the 18th century, Phillis Wheatley, she was one of the most famous poets who changed the life of most Americans. Wheatley’s most famous poem is “On Being Brought from Africa to America”. To look in more detail into this specific poem, first thing is the language that she uses, second the form and style of the poem, and lastly what message she is trying to get to her audience.

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