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.

The Cry of the Children

In "The Cry of the Children," she paints a wrenching picture of the plight of child laborers, alternating appeals to the reader with the children’s' own descriptions of their conditions. In responding to/explicating this, consider both the appeals and the children’s voices.

The poem is spoken by an adult, someone amongst those who might not have seen the plight of the children at first and wishes to educate about the problem. They ask “Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,//Ere the sorrow comes with years?” These children are suffering and there is no comfort, “They are leaning their young heads against their mothers,//And that cannot stop their tears.” These children are being denied the same freedoms that other simpler creatures are permitted, “They are weeping in the playtime of the others,//In the country of the free.” The speaker is expecting to be questioned, for others to ask why the children are crying. While the speaker does respond, it is left to the children to do so as well. They are young and feel weak, they do not understand why only the old are expected to die and they are not, “‘Ask for the aged why they weep, and not the children,//For the outside earth is cold,//And we young ones stand without, in our bewildering,//And the graves are for the old.” They feel like death could almost be a blessing compared to what they’re going through working, they talk specifically about one girl, Alice who they are sure is better off dead as “merry go her moments, lulled and stilled in//The shroud by the kirk chime.” Then they feel for themselves that it’s better to die early, “‘It is good when it happens,’ say the children,// ‘That we die before our time.’” The children say when told they should go out and play in the meadows, that “‘cannot run or leap;//If we cared for meadows, it were merely//To drop down in them and sleep.’” These are children forced to work and not permitted a childhood. They don’t know the joy of running in the meadows or picking flowers because they’ve never done such things. This piece is tragic and really expresses what Barrett Browning was going for I feel. That being sorrow for these poor children and outrage that such things were ever so.