On Being Brought from Africa to America

By claiming that “mercy” brought her from her “pagan land” (Line 1), Wheatley’s speaker begins the poem in a metaphoric space rather than a literal one. The word “mercy” becomes a metaphor to replace the personal specifics of Wheatley’s enslavement: her capture, passage, and sale. By choosing to metaphorically rather than literally describe her experience, Wheatley avoids traumatic sentiment and also dodges the potential scorn of proslavery readers. Instead, “mercy” becomes the personified force that lifts the once ignorant speaker. Still, most readers of the poem will know something about the horrors of slavery and may consider “mercy” a peculiar diction choice here.

The first four lines of the poem establish the speaker’s intelligence. Wheatley dually uses the word “benighted” in second line; first, to suggest that the speaker lacked educational opportunity, and second, to imply the blackness of her skin. With the second line, the speaker remarks how her “soul” now “understand[s],” suggesting that both her mind and her spirit are unified in knowledge. As the poem continues, the speaker specifies that part of this understanding is the acceptance of God: “[T]here’s a God […] there’s a savior too” (Line 3).