Phillis Wheatley is one of the most influential poets in American history, particularly for paving the way for African American poets and women poets. Her rare, and arguably free, education allowed her to convey her messages of freedom, reform, and religion to a wide audience of intellectuals. Although his messages seem, at times, sardonic, he uses his knowledge of Greek mythology, African-American social issues and political nuances to express his uninhibited cry for freedom. Phillis Wheatley's On Imagination uses the metaphysical plane as a way to spiritually transcend the bonds of slavery and create a realm where all humanity, more specifically slaves, have the ability to be free from the oppressive nature of the physical world through pretext of imagination. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Wheatley uses height, audio cues, and light to describe the powerful exodus of slaves to metaphorical freedom and to exemplify the idea that the escape is spiritual rather than corporeal. Wheatley describes the happy escape as a heavenly plane, high above the earthly world. He writes that one must be “Soaring through the air to find the luminous abode / The empyrean palace of the thundering God” (223), to eclipse the earth and achieve something beyond mere existence. Furthermore, Wheatley emphasizes words such as bright, gold, and light to concretely focus on visual images that make the empyrean plane transcend all negative attributions of the boring physical world. According to these notions, imagination is perfection because it overcomes all the turmoil of the mortal plane and therefore cannot be controlled or stopped. Imagination, for her and the other slaves, is the exact opposite of their outlook on life because it cannot be contained and is the only thing they can have free will over. Questioning, regarding the imagination, “Who can sing your strength?” (223), Wheatley creates a parallel between the imagination and God, as in the Christian faith hymns and spirituals create a strong connection between the higher being and the individual. In this poem, it is evident that Imagination is not a communal god, one who asserts and accesses power through collective recognition by man, but Imagination is a god who cannot be described, worshiped, or quantified in any way. Wheatley uses names like flying, enlightenment, freedom to describe imagination because these words themselves are indescribable. The meaning of light, sound and height suggests that imagination has the power to bring an individual to a higher plane of life and illuminate his existence in the same way that God would. These specific landmarks indicate further the accessibility of these distant lands and conceptualize freedom, of the mind, for all people. Fantasy and imagination are separate but equal forces that are tangible modes of escape and are easily accessible to all who believe and adhere. to their power. By focusing on power as the key to escape, Wheatley was able to give the slaves something they so desperately wanted. He writes, “Such is thy power, nor are thy orders in vain / O thou, head of the mental train” (223). By constructing powerful, black-woman-created deities, slaves were able to identify with the faith rather than reject the idea of a freemen's paradise preached by white men. The image of a train is vital to American narratives as, in particular, it represents a path to a better life and more specifically a path to freedom. Imagination seems to have a.
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