blog #7

After reading Frances E.W. Harpers poem “The Slave Mother” and “Ethiopia” and John Green Whittier “The Hunters of Men” and “The Farewell of a Virginia Slave Mother to Her Daughters Sold into Southern Bondage” I found the element of imagery most appealing to analyze these four poems.  In the poem “The Slave Mother” I thought the images Harper painted for readers really allowed them to feel what stress and sorrows a mother and child went through during slavery.  I think a great example is where Harper writes “She is a mother, pale with fear, Her boy clings to her side, And in her kirtle vainly tried His trembling form to hide. He is not hers. Although she bore, For him a mother’s pains; He is not hers, although her blood Is coursing through his veins! (p.1231)”.   Here readers can see the little boy clinging to his mother and his mothers sorrow that her child is the property of another human and that she has no way to protect him or keep him from danger.  I think this imagery probably pulled on the heart strings of mothers who could never imagine having one of her children taken from her or not being able to protect her own flesh and blood and persuaded them to see slavery in a more negative light than they already did.  Another form of imagery that I found moving was in the poem “The Farewell of a Virginia Slave Mother to Her Daughters Sold into Southern Bondage” by Whittier.  Throughout the whole poem he writes about daughters of a slave being sold in slavery and being gone forever from their family.  I think Whittier persuades a younger audience when he writes “Never, when the torturing lash Seams their back with many a gash, Shall a mother’s kindness bless them, Or a mother’s arms caress them (1223).” By describing how a young girl will never be comforted by her mother again, I think Whittier changes the views of slavery in a younger audience because when a child gets hurt or doesn’t feel well the first person they cry for is their mom and with this statement younger people are able to think and feel what that would be like to be taken from the person that they cherish most.