Summary and critical review of ‘To His Excellency General Washington’
Introduction
I do not think Phillis Wheatley should have written a letter to George Washington praising him for fighting for America’s freedom. I believe she should have addressed the fact the she was brought to America from Africa as a slave. She should have written about the freedom for the African’s that were enslaved for hundreds of years, instead of worrying about George Washington’s fight for America’s freedom. In the following analysis of the letter of introduction, and the subsequent poem, Phillis Wheatley comes across as a poet who was out of touch with her roots and engaged in this particular endeavor for an esthetic rather than substantial purpose.
The preceding letter to the poem reinforces this stand as the poet takes great effort to attracting the attention of the general towards the poem. The effort towards getting a positive reaction to the poem by Washington betrays the poet’s strong need for approval. In trying to influence the mentality of the General towards the poem, the poet lends it of no universal value, rather an effort of vanity. The fear that Washington would not approve of her efforts portrays her as seeking the view of a liberalized African slave who supports the cause of the British settlers against their mother country. This effort, actually, was a misplaced effort towards relevance to the colonialists who had exceptionally ‘assimilated’ her and afforded her luxuries such as an education for instance (Chris 11).
The irony in the poem arises with the fact that the poet is a black female lauding and encouraging a white male to fight for their rights. During this period, Wheatley was still a slave, and came to achieve her freedom much later because of her literary accomplishments. It is beyond sense therefore, that she praises the America’s as the land of freedom while she does not enjoy that freedom at a personal level. The praise and expense of superlatives on George Washington as the custodian and warrior for freedom is ironic, and to say the least, inappropriate. The white populations resident in America hailed from the European countries, a majority of whom from the British monarchy. The fight for freedom by George Washington was against the British for the control of the resources found in the Americas. That freedom, however, did not extend to cover the immediate freedom of the slaves held by the plantation owners in the Americas. Wheatley had an immediate battle to fight, but chose not to. She sought a freedom that would only serve illusionary purpose for her, and other slaves toiling in a situation such as hers.
American affixation with heroism attests in the poem with manner with which George Washington is referred to with all manner of grandeur. In the poem, George Washington encompasses all the virtues due to society with an elaborate espousal of all the accomplishments Washington had managed as an army commander. Wheatley goes to great extent to praise Washington’s virtue as an individual poised to save America; this is a flawed approach considering the modern interpretation of the poem. War has happened in many places all over the world, and the human race experienced its awful wrath. The first and the second world wars are an ample background for reference (Thomason 63). The apprehension towards war by the modern reader of the poem would invoke feelings of repulsion against the poem, or the ideas held by the author, in her attempt at glorifying war. The glorification of war, by a woman of African descent specifically is worth note as an odd occurrence. Wheatley enjoyed a privileged position as a slave with her owners kind enough to allow her some education. In this poem however, she betrays the tribulations women of her kind face and does not address their plight at all and the suffering they underwent during the war. Women, while not being frontline warriors, often suffer the brunt of most wars in the effort of caring for the children. It is difficult to imagine that the war waged by Washington had no ill effect on the population, as Wheatley praises him so much as to state in line 39 of her poem that Washington has ‘virtue on his side’.
The poem, further describes the people of the Americas as the ‘Freedom’s heaven defended race’. This is the assumption that the Gods bless the American people, and that their freedom descends directly from the authority of God. The freedom of the American people is not a thing that should be allocated to them, rather an entitlement by default. This view shapes the American society up to date, with the American people jealously defending their freedom. The poem serves the purpose of motivating the General, George Washington, through flattery of his invincibility and the unwavering support God had of the American side to the conflict. The view by Wheatley, of the conflict as a united America affair, is flawed. The slaves in the colonial times had little to no right and existed, not as individuals, but as commercial objects with the potential for sale in a slave market, even to a foreign country. The freedom the poet roots for, therefore, is of no consequence if its achievement happens while they are still in their condition as slaves (Thomason 87).
The inference by the poet on what Columbia’s fury can do, with a reference to the Indian and the French wars is a statement I find out of place in the poem. The poet glorifies the exploits of the British colonialists in the Americas against the native tribes and against the rival colonialists. This siding with the British colonialists against the French is a display of the displacement from reality Wheatley had of her situation. The British settlers sourced slaves from Africa and other less developed places of the earth, no different from the French or the other European settlers. The success of the British settlers against their French competitors had little significance towards alleviating the suffering the slaves suffered, if anything, it amplified their need for more slaves to tend to their newly acquired lands, translating to more subjection of innocent Africans to slavery. Wheatley, instead of glorifying this success, had a better chance as an educated slave to articulate the suffering and the grievances of the slaves to the world. The Indians too, suffered a similar fate to the slaves. In contrast, however, they fought for their freedom, albeit losing, put their best effort at protecting their dignity and ancestral land.
Wheatley defeats this virtue by exalting the inhumane manner with which the Indians lost what rightfully belonged to them. Her failure as a slave to admonish acts such as these wrongfully portrays her as an individual with the world to gain from the settler’s success.
The poet closes the final stanza with a clarion call of action to the great chief, and a prayer to the goddess to offer guidance to Washington. She prays that he finds a crown a mansion and a throne that shines with gold that never fades. With this prayer, the poet is symbolically bestowing all the power over the American people, the unfading shine representing the unending reign she prays for him. This prayer beats sense in that slavery happened by the absolute power of the colonialists over their oppressed. The power to put an individual under forced labor by use of, primarily brutal force, formed the basis for its perpetuation. The wish of eternal power upon an individual who possess power through the same brutal methods that put her and other slaves under oppression is a wish upon the extension of the same tactics in future.
In conclusion, the poet adopts a tone of subservience and obedience, a stance of complete admiration for the efforts taken by the general in fighting for the freedom of America from Britain. She takes a personal interest, and the reference made to Washington, as his Excellency, betrays her need for adoption by the fighters for liberty, as one of their own. While King George the third committed atrocities by sanctioning slavery, there was no guarantee that with the realization of American freedom from Britain, slavery would stop. In contrast, slavery persisted even with the realization of independence, rendering her praise of Washington and his soldiers as a work in futility towards her true cause, and changing her status and as an enslaved person (Humphreys 59).
Wheatley should have embarked on an endeavor to genuine tackling of the slavery issue by addressing it directly. Not necessarily getting positive reviews for the effort, but making her voice heard and her honest position known, that slavery is clue and need not persist, either in a colonial America, or in a ‘reborn’ America. Columbia, a land of freedom, was a bit premature for her and the other individuals subjected to slavery.
Works cited
Humphreys, David. Poems by Col. David Humphreys: Late Aid-De-Camp to His Excellency General Washington. Philadelphia: Printed by Mathew Carey, 1789. Internet resource
Thomason, Elizabeth, and Anne M. Hacht. Poetry for Students: Presenting Analysis, Context and Criticism on Commonly Studied Poetry. Detroit: Gale Group, 2001. Print.
Napierkowski, Marie R, Mary K. Ruby, Ira M. Milne, Michael L. LaBlanc, Elizabeth Thomason, Jennifer Smith, Anne M. Hacht, and David Galens. Poetry for Students: Presenting Analysis, Context and Criticism on Commonly Studied Poetry. Detroit, Mich: Gale, 1998. Print.
Chris S. "A Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste: September 2013." A Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 Nov. 2013.
