The Abduction By Rita Dove Analysis

In her poem, “The Abduction”, Rita Dove writes about an African American in order to illustrate the evils of society in the 19th century. In the first stanza, the author reveals a lot about the setting and the characters. For example, the stanza tells the readers that the speaker is Solomon Northup, who was a free African American. This fact adds significance to the other descriptions mentioned, such as the “free papers” Northrup carried in his pocket. He needs this sheet of paper, because the setting is in Washington D.C., which was back then a slave state. Thus, he carried the free paper to prove his status as a free African American. The last line of the poem reveals the characters named Brown and Hamilton, who were actually men who drugged

On top of this, “The wages” the two men offered “were good”. Combined with the fact that African Americans at the time had an extremely hard time finding decent jobs, the Dove is not only able to convey that Northrup unknowingly accepting the fake offer is completely reasonable, but she is also able to illustrate the immorals of the two men, who used the desperate situation of free blacks to lure Northrup into slavery for their own benefits. The evils of the two men are further conveyed in the last stanzas, in which it describes the moment Northrup falls under slavery. In this line, the author describes the speaker being “in darkness” and “in chains”. Dove here uses “darkness” to reveal the tone of despair and uses a metaphor to compare the acts of being physically chained to that of being “chained” to slavery. Because this line conveys the misery Northrup feels as a result of being enslaved, the Dove is able to further delineate the immoral acts of Brown and Hamilton. In “The Abduction”, Rita Dove recounts the story of an African American being tricked into slavery by two men for their own benefits in order to illustrate the immorals of the