One possible reason that the speaker of the poem only calls the slave by the pronoun "he," rather than giving him a name, is that the speaker wishes to describe a more universal slave experience, rather than the specific experience of one slave. By keeping the slave unnamed, this experience could be any slave's, all slaves', experiences; if he were named, then it becomes particular rather than universal. Any slave might have dreams of being in Africa, where he could be free and powerful. The narrator says that this slave dreams of "forests, with their myriad tongues, / [That] Shouted of liberty," making the man smile in his sleep. Then, he dies, leaving his body behind like "A worn-out fetter, that the soul / Had broken and thrown away!" Longfellow draws attention to the slave's humanity and human desire for freedom, contrasting it with the way slave-owning society has rendered his very body an instrument of torture, chaining him to a life of powerlessness and pain, and this draws attention to another possible reason the slave might be unnamed: white society does not see him as human, has tried to strip him of humanity, and refusing to name him could draw attention to this cruelty as well.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
What is the theme of the chapter Lead?
Primo Levi's complex probing of the Holocaust, including his survival of Auschwitz and pre- and post-war life, is organized around indiv...
-
The statement "Development policy needs to be about poor people, not just poor countries," carries a lot of baggage. Let's dis...
-
James is very unhappy on a number of occasions throughout the story, but he's especially unhappy with his life situation as the story be...
-
Primo Levi's complex probing of the Holocaust, including his survival of Auschwitz and pre- and post-war life, is organized around indiv...
-
One of the plot lines in Pride and Prejudice is Mrs. Bennet’s plan to marry off her daughters, preferably to rich men. Throughout the novel...
-
As if Hamlet were not obsessed enough with death, his uncovering of the skull of Yorick, the court jester from his youth, really sets him of...
-
Bacteria are single-celled microorganisms that thrive in diverse environments (such as the ocean, the soil, and the human body). Various bac...
-
Under common law, any hotel, inn, or other hospitality establishment has a duty to exercise "reasonable care" for the safety an...
No comments:
Post a Comment