Nineteenth
century poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an ardent abolitionist and academic who used his
work and his money to further the cause of abolition.
There is more than one
theme within "The Slave's Dream" (1842). It is, of course, a dream of freedom from
enslavement from a slave's perspective, but another way of looking at the poem is as a
retrospective of a man's life as he lays dying. Lines 5 and 6 complete this thought:
"Again, in the mist and shadow of sleep,
He saw his Native Land."
The lines suggest that as he approached death, the slave returned
to see, once more, his life before his subjugation. As he travels along western Africa's Niger
River, he sees his wife and children; hears lions, hyenas, and hippopotamuses; and sees plains,
ocean, and desert. His dignity and manhood are returned to him as he rides a stallion as a
warrior:
"At each leap he could feel his scabbard of steel
Smiting his stallion's flank."
The freedom of the
forests and deserts call to him and just before his death, he smiles. Death has triumphed over
the profound misery of his current situation and restored to him his true identity as a man no
longer subject to the lash of a whip. His body becomes the ultimate "fetter" that his
soul is able to forever leave behind, as is the case of every human being, Longfellow
implies.
No comments:
Post a Comment