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The Slave's Dream

To read the original poem click here,



The poem projects the paths of the a slave. 'The Slave's Dream' by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, gives an insight into the life of a slave. . It is about the hope for equality of a black servant after the abolishment of slavery. Written during the abolitionism movement, 'The Slave's Dream' helps to raise awareness of the immoral injustices black people had to face. As the most important people at this time were whites, Longfellow must have used the colour of his skin to get people to listen to his point of view through his poems.

 H. W. Longfellow uses this poem to show that black people had lives before slavery, but that the white race had taken them away. He also uses the proper diction, imageries and figures of speech throughout the poem.

In the first stanza the slave pretended as if he is too tired and falls out of the extra weakness with the sickle in his hand. He is bare chested and hair buried in sand. It is during this time that he goes down the memory lane in the form of a dream about this native land. In the next stanza we entered in his dream, where we come across the land scape of his dream. 
 In the next stanza he meets his queen standing amongst their children. 

Looking at next stanza we come across the slave riding on a horse and moving towards his native place. In the fifth stanza he is moving along side the bright flaming goes by following them from morning till the evening over the field. After some time he gets the imagery of ocean.

Next he heard the lion's roar and the hyena scream. Everything around seems to him to be very glorious and he feels victorious in his dream. In the seventh stanza the forest is personified by having myriad tongues shouted on liberty and desert decides was crying exquisited freedom. In the last stanza the readers back to reading where in the driver is wiping him furiously and he is almost dead, because he doesn't even feel the burning heat of the day.

From this poem we are made aware about that in himhu treatment of the slaves. Injustice is shown when the dream is everything about the black man's desire, but lucks due to his powerless state of existence.

Thank you...

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