My Poetry Analysis of i have a Dream Speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Poem “The Slave Auction”

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stated in his August 28th, 1963 speech: “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal' (King, pp 4, paragraph 5). He was talking about the American slave era. [Between the 17th century” until “January 1, 1863 when it was abolished] (History.com). As an African American, I’ve never personally been blatantly mistreated because of my skin color, so I don’t think much of issues of race very often.

I only see acts of racism on the news or overhear someone else talking about it. When I hear the word “slavery” I think of people of color being sold, chained, beaten, and forced to work in cotton fields for no pay. I picture slaves living in separate quarters and women forced to be maids to their owners. I envision slave owners raising select slave children as their own, but I never paid much attention to fact that many slaves were separated from their loved ones. I haven’t thought of the sorrow and anger this impact would have on slaves and their families.

In Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s poem “The Slave Auction”, The author develops the poem’s theme of sorrow and anger by using poetry elements such as, tone, imagery, rhymes and quatrains. She empathizes with the slaves and channels her anger towards the ignorance of privileged white people, who don’t understand what it was like for a black person to have their loved one ripped away from them and sold into slavery.

Harper’s creative use of tone evokes a sense of sorrow and anger. This shows the emotions of sadness in a way that we the reader can feel, such as in the first stanza of the poem, which reads:

The sale began-young girls were there,

Defenseless in their wretchedness,

Whose stifled sobs of deep despair

Revealed their anguish and distress. (lines 1-4)

Depending on the author’s use of “stifled”, It’s likely that the young girls were either in so much anguish, that they couldn’t breathe, or they had to restrain their feelings to avoid punishment. This would make them appear more attractive and profitable. Another example describing sorrow and anger, is the last line in the second stanza, which reads, “While tyrants bartered them for gold” (8). Harper is blatantly directing her anger at the slave owners by calling them tyrants. In the final two stanzas,

“Ye who have laid your love to rest,

And wept above their lifeless clay,

Know not the anguish of that breast,

Whose lov’d are rudely torn away

Ye may not know how desolate

Are bosoms rudely forced to part,

And how a dull and heavy weight

Will press the life-drops from the heart” (17-24).

By using the word “ye”, Harper is directing her anger towards the ignorance of privileged white people, who don’t know what it was like to be enslaved and have their loved one taken from them, which adds to the theme of the poem.

Harper also uses imagery to illustrate feelings of sorrow and anger, which adds to the poem’s theme. These describe emotions of the slaves and their loved ones in a way in which the reader could empathize with the slaves in the poem. For example, “Mournful band” (16) could easily be visualized as the sound of many slaves moaning and crying together in unison, like a symphony of sadness. “Their lifeless clay” (18) is referring to a corpse. Another use of imagery depicts stress and anguish as “a dull and heavy weight” (23). This suggests that when we feel upset, sad, or stressed, sometimes literally feels like a weight is on our chest. Lastly, “And men whose sole crime was their hue” (13), clearly paints a picture of overt racism.

Rhymes help connect the feelings of sorrow by giving a flow to the poem. Harper cleverly links the feelings and tone to the theme by rhyming the last word of the sentence with the alternating sentence of that stanza. For example, “and saw their children sold” (6) and “While tyrants bartered them for gold” (8) Both “sold” and “gold” which rhyme, are referring to a purchase of a slave. “And mothers stood with streaming eyes” (5) and “Unheeded rose their bitter cries” (7) “Eyes” and “Cries” also rhyme and describe people crying. And lastly, “And men, whose sole crime was their hue” (13), “and frail and shrinking children, too” (15) This example is describing two types of slaves: men and children. While the single words “hue “and “too” don’t necessarily have a correlation of their own, the rhyme does connect the content of what comes before in their associated sentences together.

To further add to the theme of the poem, Harper uses quatrains to organize feelings of sorrow and anger and associate them into stanzas. Each group of four sentences in the stanza has the same tone, while designating who the emotions are connected to. Here are a few examples. In stanza one,

The sale began-young girls were there,

Defenseless in their wretchedness,

Whose stifles sobs of deep despair

Revealed their anguish and distress (1-4),

the author is talking about children in distress. In stanza two,

And mothers stood with streaming eyes,

And saw their dearest children sold;

Unheeded rose their bitter cries,

While tyrants bartered them for gold. (5-8),

is referring to mothers crying because their children were sold. Finally, in stanza five and six,

Ye who have laid your love to rest,

And wept above their lifeless clay,

Know not the anguish of that breast,

Whose lov’d are rudely torn away. (21-24)

are denoting privileged white people who never had to endure the pain and hardships the slaves went through. They were safe from harm because they were never judged by the color of their white skin.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. also said in his speech, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” (King, pp 5, paragraph 1). In this poem, the author uses specific poetry elements to effectively express the pain and sorrow the loved ones of slaves who were judged by their skin color. She also addresses the fact that privileged white people cannot relate to the pain, sorrow and grief that their loved ones have endured. They weren’t judged by the color of their skin to the point where they were enslaved, and they suffered like the slaves did. I myself, have lost loved ones to death, but only by natural causes. I have known sorrow, anger, and grief. But like the privileged white people the author indirectly alludes to in the last two stanzas of the poem, I have never experienced those feelings while also knowing my loved ones are somewhere else, tortured, raped… unsure if they are alive or not. That is a higher level of sorrow that I could never relate to. I can’t even begin to imagine how that would feel inside. 

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