The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point

In "The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point," a dramatic monologue, she takes aim at slavery in America. In responding to/explicating this, treat it as a dramatic monologue. Who is speaking? What is the situation? How do we know? Also discuss whether and how this is an effective way of arguing against slavery.

The speaker is a slave on the run. She has made it to Pilgrim’s Point, or Plymouth Rock, in Massachusetts. The woman addressed the spirits of the long dead pilgrims, “O piligrim-souls, I speak to you!” She seemed to think herself and her race lower than the whites that make them work, as she says that she knows God made her, but “He must have cast his work away//Under the feet of his white creatures”. It looks like she questions this position she’s been placed in, “And yet He has made dark things//To be glad and merry as light”. She speaks of her own life, the love she was given by another slave, “And tender and full was the look he gave-//Could a slave look so at another slave?” and the freedom she felt from that, “And from that hour our spirits grew//As free as if unsold, unbought” This man she loved so much was killed, or at least beaten and taken away, but considering “They wrung [her] cold hands out of his,//They dragged him-where? I crawled to touch//His blood marks in the dust” we as the reader at least see that this man is out of the picture. The men that took him away also raped her, “Wrong, followed by a deeper wrong!//Mere grief’s too good for such as I://So the white men brought the same ere long” Which led to her pregnancy with a mixed child that appeared more white than black. “And the babe that lay on my bosom so,//Was far too white, too white for me” Because of this and she killed her baby. She carried the dead body about with her still though, until she ran off to bury it. Once buried, she considered the child black now that the dead body was covered in dirt, “All, changed to black earth,-nothing white,-//A dark child in the dark!” This is the point where we come to the present, where the women had first been addressing the ghosts. Now she is addressing the reader, who is placed amongst the white men. They hang her, thinking she is mad, but she knows she’ll see “the white child waiting for me.”

The speaker is strong and a good voice against slavery. Her story is utterly sad and easy to sympathize with. I think it’s a fine argument against slavery. Toward the end, she appeals to Christianity and essentially says that slavery goes against it, “Two kinds of men in adverse rows,//Each loathing each; and all forget//The seven wounds in Christ’s body fair” which if that didn’t hit home for at least the educated Christians reading, I’d be surprised.

You get the speaker and the situation, but you still don't get the (present) audience in the poem: her pursuers.

The screwy time frame sometimes throws me off. As best I can determine, her pursuers don't really know or care about the situation of her dead child which she had killed. They were likely more concerned with her being a runaway than any other action she'd taken up on this journey. They were just sent to deal with her and find her mad. Truthfully, they wouldn't be wrong, but it was the white men handling of her and the pale skin of her child I feel that drove her to that.

Not as influential as "Cry of the Children"

True. I know someone else said it before and I'm going to guess Ash, but don't quote me on that, but someone had said it was difficult to sympathize with the speaker because while she is in a sad and desperate situation, she still murdered her child. I think it's the shock of that and how she loves it more once it's in the ground that made me feel for her more. I can see what you mean about the poem addressing slavery in America and therefore not hitting home with the English as much. It's true, their situation in England is much different and it makes good sense for the plight of the children to be more hard hitting.