aFRICA
...erica from her pagan land. I also looked at pagan, which is the word she used to let us know that the land she once lived in had no religion for her to grasp. Her next few lines were well written and read, “Taught my beknighted soul to understand, that there’s a God, that there’s a Savior too. Once I redemption rather sought nor knew”. I took these few lines and understood what she was trying to let us know. Phillis was once ignorant to the religion aspect of life, but, because of being kidnapped, which she felt was a blessing from God, she now knew him personally. Phillis wrote a line in her poem that I really took time to think about. It goes, “Some view our sable race with a scornful eye, their color is a diabolic dye”. By looking up these words I found out that when referring to something as sable, you are referring to the color black. She also used the word diabolic, which means wicked. Phillis used the words sable race, scornful eye, and diabolic dye to give a concrete statement. When writing the word sable she was attempting to let us know that she was talking about a darker color race, or African descendant. Phillis also used the word scornful eye in her poem. When a person has a scornful eye, they look at you with disgust, or with bad emotion about you. The last word that she used in these couple of sentences was diabolic dye. When referring to something being of diabolic dye, you are saying wicked or an evil color. I believe that Phillis was letting us know that by her being an African woman, people of a lighter race looked at her with disgust. I found this to be true given the time period that Phillis wrote the poem. Studying the last few lines of her poem: “Remember Christians, negroes, black as Cain, may be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train”, I found these lines to be very important. Philiis used the name Cain, which in the Bible was one of the very first descendants of Adam and Eve. In the Bible it is written that Cain killed his brother Abel. While I read the line that Phillis wrote with Cain in it, I understood her reasoning for including that particular name. Cain is considered an evil being. Why? He murdered his brother. He is the first person to commit murder that is documented in the Bible. I think she used his name, because like Cain, she felt that she too was...