Journal #7: Abolitionist Poetry

In Frances E. W. Harper’s poem “The Slave Mother” I spotted a ton of imagery in this poem. Not just imagery in the visual sense, but also auditory. With imagery the reader is supposed to experience in his or her own mind what picture and scene the author is painting. In Harper’s poem the very first line is a perfect example of imagery, “Heard you that shriek?” (Harper pg. 1231). Automatically I hear in my head, not a yell, not a shout, because to me those words of despair have a heavier tone, but I heard a shriek; a blood wrenching, high pitched shriek. To me that tells that this is a sad poem and I’m supposed to be feeling sympathy or empathy for the author or characters in the poem. As I read this poem towards the end Harper is describing the pain and misery a slave mother is feeling as her child is being taken away from her. Harper uses more auditory imagery by using “His lightest word has been a tone of music around her heart” (Harper pg. 1232). Used as a metaphor, I can still imagine and hear as the reader the joy of music that is compared to her son’s voice in her mind and heart. This tells me that the boy is the light and joy of this mother’s world. The last verse now ends with another shriek as the son and the mother are torn apart. I can hear as the poem reads “No marvel, then, these bitter shrieks disturb the listening air: she is a mother, and her heart is breaking in despair” (Harper 1232). As the poem starts and as the poem ends I can sense auditory imagery as I hear the mother shrieking in pain as her son is taken away from her forever. Harper is persuading her audience or reform in that no mother should have to feel the pain of having her child rip from the heart and physical grasp of the love she has for that child. If this slave were to be a white woman, she would not have to proceed with any government law, proceeding or injunction that she had to have her child taken away for monetary purposes and that the fact that her skin is different. I think Harper telling this narrative is a moral suasion for the audience to feel in order for there to be sympathy to then in return find a social reform of children not being taken away from their mothers. It’s interesting because in the text it says “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” (Harper pg. 1231). This is a huge hit at what reform should happen in that a child should not be taken away! The blood of this child is the mother’s, yet because of the law that the mother is slave, therefor a child is, the child belongs to the law and that child can be taken anywhere. I think Harper uses this imagery to convey to the audience pathos of how no mother should have to go through that pain.