Analytical Essay Examples to Score Well in Academics

Although Wheatley wrote before the American Civil War, before the civil rights and women’s movements that helped to solidify the black American literary tradition and the black woman’s literary tradition with the work of writers such as W.E.B. DuBois, Zora Neale Hurston, and Toni Morrison, to name but a few, the experimentation with form and language in Wheatley’s poetry shows that she was keenly aware and highly critical of the way that, because of social hypocrisies and prejudices, race and gender defined her experiences. The sharpness of her social criticism, apparent in two of her major poems, “On Being Brought from Africa to America,” and “To His Excellency General Washington,” justifies Gates’ argument about Wheatley’s role as founder of the black American’s and black woman’s literary traditions.

As “On Being Brought from Africa to America” must remind any reader, Phillis Wheatley was a slave for most of her live and she wrote most of her poetry in slavery. The immediate subject of the poem is how she was brought into slavery: she was taken from Africa, her “Pagan land” (1) and she was converted to Christianity. Wheatley’s treatment of this experience, though, is not simply based on a recounting of it. Her language and form emphasize the hypocrisy of the white, Americans who sanctioned and maintained her slavery in the first place, while also proclaiming themselves to be Christians. The opening of the poem, “’Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land” (1) employs a somewhat formal and archaic contraction, “‘Twas,” but it also suggests that the poem is a narrative, telling a story, as, indeed, it does on two levels. Saying that it was “mercy” (1) that bought about her removal from Africa, however, clearly invites irony. Wheatley’s readers were certainly aware that the circumstances of slavery and the conditions in which people were brought from African are far from consistent with any notion of mercy. Certainly, they are not consistent with the idea of Christian mercy. Wheatley emphasizes the hypocrisy of the Christians responsible for her removal, though, by using the adjective “Pagan” (1) to describe her land and to capitalizing it, which provides further emphasis. The verb “brought” (1) also echoes the verb, bought, which suggests the transactional context of Wheatley’s removal, the commercial issues that were at the heart of slavery. The verb “[t]aught” (2) opening the second line implies that there was an educational purpose behind Wheatley’s removal from Africa. Taught implies teaching, education, and the positive development of an individual. However, there is a second idea that emerges from the verb and its sound, especially. Taught implies the condition of restraints and echoes a common image of slavery. Wheatley’s description of her soul as “benighted” (2) resonates the same irony as her use of mercy in line one. The word indicates a state of ignorance, which Wheatley, as a Christian, appears to genuinely accept. However, the notion of her soul as pitiful or weak is ironic because she has endured slavery and, in recognizing the hypocrisy of white Americans, she indicates that she is capable of a higher spirituality. She understands “[t]hat there’s a God, that there’s a Saviour, too” (3) and in doing so, she understands the lessons that she was taught. She recognizes a truth and she recognizes the truth despite having come from a “Pagan land” (1). The colon at the end of line two also constructs an explanatory connection between line three and four. In line four, she acknowledges that she recognized Christian truth despite her past, when “[o]nce I redemption neither sought nor knew” (4). She also suggests again, though, that she was brought from her homeland against her will and she was made a Christian because the word “redemption” (4), while it carries obvious religious connotations, is ironic; its second application within this sentence pertains to Wheatley’s experience of slavery. Structurally, the poem moves into its second phase at the end of line four, too. The end-stop with a period marks the end of the first portion, concentrated on Wheatley’s discovery of true Christianity in parallel to her experience of slavery. The second phase of the poem exposes the attitudes of white Americans towards African Americans and is the point at which Wheatley’s voice, as a black American writer and a black American woman, extends beyond the frame of her own experience to express the condition of black Americans and black women as collectives. The determiner, “some” (5) in relation to “people” (5) behaves as a limiting and somewhat alienating term, but this effect is mimetic of the idea expressed, that those with darker skin, the “sable” race, are treated “with scornful eye” (5), the focus on “eye” suggesting the way in which they are viewed as other and creating a literalness within the poem’s language, picking up on the “view” earlier in the line as both a verb, as it is syntactically in the line, and a noun. Also interesting is the way that “eye” necessitates a dismemberment of the body of the “some,” which really anticipates the way in which the African American body is considered in later texts considered central to the African American literary tradition, such as Morrison’s Beloved. This line also concentrates attention on grammar, on syntax, which is vital to the interpretation of the final two lines; in a way, it primes the reader to be conscious to grammatical order. The quoted “Their color is diabolical die” (6) draws out the meaning of “view” as opinion but also performs that judgment, showing the scornful “eye” and the scornful statements both. The final two lines, another rhymed couplet, can be read as advising Christians that Negros “black as Cain” (7) should still be treated kindly, considered capable of redemption. The alternative read, however, situates the addressees as “Negros” (7) and suggests that Wheatley reminds them to remember that Christians, “black as Cain” in a metaphorical sense, should still be forgiven. The critical tone and indeed the semantics of both of these interpretations strongly affirm Wheatley’s effort to condemn the abuse of “Negros” and establish her as at least one of the first African American writers to write and publish work that does just this.

Wheatley’s poem, written to “His Excellency General Washington” also affirms her place as the founder of the black American and black women writers traditions. Although the poem is praiseful, appearing to celebrate the triumph of George Washington as a military and political leader in the outcome of the American Revolutionary War, like all such poems written in praise it is a subtle argument for the need and opportunity for an individual, already praiseworthy, to further improve themselves and benefit those around them. Wheatley’s knowledge of classical literature allows that each and every one of her classical allusions has profound significance and when she refers to “[c]elestial choir!” (2) and also to “Columbia’s scenes of glorious toil I write” (2), the focus is not only upon the representation of America’s triumph but upon something of an ironic allusion that is in itself a basis for criticism. Columbia is a figure throughout the poem that clearly represents the fledgling nature of the United States. Wheatley suggests, though, specifically that other nations are looking to the United States, they “gaze at scenes before unknown” (6) and that, although America has just triumphed against the British, what they have yet to do effectively is make the most of these “[u]nnumber’d charms and recent grace rise” (10). Wheatley’s approach is to praise Washington in the poem as a kind of demi-god, but also then to suggest that he needs to  work to be a better “guardian” to African Americans, he needed to condemn in a negative fashion. She invites reformation building on the goodness that is already apparent in Washington but she suggests that it also needs to happen to continue on a process of development to reach its potential.

Although Wheatley was writing very early in the American literary tradition and she is sometimes dismissed as an obscure writer, Henry Louis Gates was, it seems, justified in his statement about her. She offered the first black American and black female poetic voices to American readers and the world. She wrote not only about her own experiences as a black woman and a slave in America, exploring the inhumanity of slavery and her treatment at the hands of those who professed themselves superior and devout. She also examined the wider social conditions in the poetry and used texts like her address to Washington to work out some of the hypocrisies but also invite improvement, advocating for the better treatment of black Americans.