Literary Response

The poem, A Slave’s Dream, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was a written piece of literature dedicated in portraying the inner thoughts and feelings of a captive slave through the use of syntax, pathos, and imagery. The syntax is used throughout the poem to convey the thoughts and ideas of the wilting slave as he passes from his life on earth to heaven where his soul remains free from all confinements that once withheld him from liberty. The words used in each sentence were formed precisely to portray the idea of freedom from captivity through death. “Again, in the mist and shadow of sleep, He saw his Native Land.”(A Slave’s Dream, line 5-6) is an example of the use of syntax to convey the thoughts of the slave as he died that was only obtainable through his dreams, the shadow of sleep representing the slow process of falling into an eternal slumber of death as the dream of the Slave’s native land replays in his mind before he passes; resembling the act of simply dozing off and becoming lost in a dream of the mind. The sentence structure is dedicated to the process of making the reader understand the feelings and thoughts of the slave through acts of pathos- the connection of sleeping and dying being the equal for a slave having an emotional effect on most, if not all, his readers through suggestions of physical and emotional captivity. Emotion plays a paramount role in the progression of the poem with the ties of relation and thought to the readers freedom of choice and liberty of life; comparing their own liberties to the one’s of slave’s making a drastic emotional effect on the reader with intense thought and ambiguity about real freedom- while tying them back to the idea of freedom after death and freedom of a slave through sleep.
“For Death had illumined the Land of Sleep” (A Slave’s Dream, line 46) is another example of the use of syntax due to the formatting and language the author uses to convey liberty after death. Death illuminating the Land of Sleep was a use of figurative language as an extended metaphor or an allegorical comparison to give the thought of dying as being similar to dreaming; again, playing with pathos as well as imagery to portray the thought of someone sleeping and their dreams being their innermost desires and wishes of life. Throughout the slave’s dream sequences, the reader is given vivid descriptions of his life back in his Native Land of Africa through the details and imagery the author provides as his reader’s visual during the poem progression. The syntax used in the sentence is representing how dying shadows sleeping and dreaming, the slave’s death being the equivalent to him drifting off into slumber and dreaming of his previous life before his captivity being the ultimate freedom he can obtain only through death and sleep, and the only reachable freedom he had while living on earth being the outlet of his dreams. Imagery and pathos suggests that his dreams are the thoughts of his homeland and his death is the only escape route he to get there.