Phillis Wheatley: Poems Essay Questions

What role does Greek and Roman mythology play in Wheatley's poetry?

Wheatley's works consistently reference Greek and Roman heroic figures, including Aurora, Achilles, and Damon. Wheatley also frequently references classical writers, such as Homer and Virgil, and she was heavily inspired by Alexander Pope's heroic verse and translations of these classical writers. Within her poems, Wheatley often personifies important words like virtue and imagination, likening them to Greek and Roman gods and providing them with a specific power and influence over the poem.

How do Phillis Wheatley's poems make a case for equality and abolition?

Several of Phillis Wheatley's poems directly address slavery and the kidnapping of Africans. In her poem,"To the Right Honourable WILLIAM, Earl of DARTMOUTH, his Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State of North-America, &c.” the speaker passionately describes her love of freedom and insists that William, Earl of Dartmouth, support the manumission of enslaved Africans, in addition to supporting the freedom of the colonies when he denouncing the Stamp Act. In her letter, "On the Death of General Wooster," addressed to Mary Wooster, Wheatley writes “But how presumptuous shall we hope to find/ Divine acceptance with th’ Almighty mind–/ While yet (O deed ungenerous!) they disgrace/ And hold in bondage Afric’s blameless race?” These lines directly call into question the mindset that Christians can reconcile their religion with the enslavement of Africans.

What role does "Freedom" play in "To the Right Honourable WILLIAM, Earl of DARTMOUTH, his Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State of North-America, &c."?

In this poem, the speaker personifies and emphasizes Freedom, and the importance of Freedom to a person captured and kidnapped from Africa. This poem implores the Earl of Dartmouth to recognize that the freedom he advocated for under the Stamp Act is the same freedom he should advocate for with regards to Africans enslaved in America. Freedom here goes beyond its usual abstract meaning, and becomes a Goddess looking on in shame at the subjection of the African people in the Americas.

How does Phillis Wheatley use personification in her poetry?

Several of Wheatley's poems employ personification to emphasize and elucidate important themes within the poem. Personification features prominently in "On Imagination" and "On Virtue," as both "Virtue" and "Imagination" are given heroic roles, and aid the speaker in self-discovery. In "To the Right Honourable WILLIAM, Earl of DARTMOUTH, his Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State of North-America, &c.," "Freedom" is personified in order to exhibit the importance of emancipation for enslaved Africans in America, and to show the universality and significance of the concept of freedom, especially to a speaker that was forcibly transported to America and enslaved.

What is the role played by God and religion in Wheatley's poems?

Religion features prominently in most of Wheatley's poems, and Wheatley often invokes Greek and Roman religious figures alongside Christian imagery. Indeed, poems like "To S.M. a young African Painter, on seeing his Works," the speaker discusses seraphim, members of the highest order of angels in Christianity, alongside Aurora and Damon, Greek mythological figures. The way that Wheatley personifies certain words within her poems also evokes a religious and mythical connotation; these words become humanized and then exalted, in a Greek heroic fashion, within the text. Ultimately, religion plays a central part within Wheatley's writings, and is present in some way in nearly all of her work.