{"id":180,"date":"2023-02-14T20:24:47","date_gmt":"2023-02-14T20:24:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/?p=180"},"modified":"2023-02-14T20:24:47","modified_gmt":"2023-02-14T20:24:47","slug":"savage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/2023\/02\/14\/savage\/","title":{"rendered":"Savage"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Hannah More\u2019s 1788 abolitionist work \u201cSlavery: A Poem,\u201d she writes \u201cThe unconquered savage laughs at pain and toil, \/ Basking in Freedom\u2019s beams which gild his native soil\u2026 \/\/ And thou, white savage\u2026\u201d on lines (123-125).\u00a0 Within these lines, she utilizes the word \u201csavage\u201d twice to refer to white people.\u00a0 This word choice serves as a reversal of roles, framing white people as the barbarians rather than black people.\u00a0 White people had been describing black people using terms such as \u201csavages\u201d for years as a means of justifying slavery.\u00a0 By calling them savage, white people created a subcategory of \u201clesser\u201d humans and forced black people into them.\u00a0 If black people could be considered less-than-human, or beasts, white people could feel better about enslaving them and treating them poorly.\u00a0 More\u2019s reversal of roles serves as a psychological attack against people who support slavery, ultimately contributing to the propagandist nature of the poem as a whole.<\/span><\/p>\n

White, anti-abolition readers who remain \u201cunconquered\u201d feel what it is like to be dehumanized while being fully human.\u00a0 Being insulted the same way they insult black people (being called a savage) may evoke empathy in some of them, allowing them to see how unjust it is to have their human status unrightfully stripped away from them.\u00a0 More\u2019s use of the word \u201csavage\u201d also points out the hypocrisy among supporters of slavery.\u00a0 More hints that the more white people treat black people like they are savages, the more savage they themselves become.\u00a0 What makes someone less human is not the color of their skin, but their cruel treatment of those around them.\u00a0 In other words, one who dehumanizes others is only ultimately dehumanizing themself.<\/span><\/p>\n

The effect these lines of the poem have on white readers who are anti-abolitionist is one that elicits feelings of empathy, guilt, and shame.\u00a0 Perhaps some of these readers will have an epiphany, finally realizing how supporting slavery has turned them into barbaric monsters.\u00a0 The final line of the poem, line 226, states that \u201cConquest is pillage with a nobler name!\u201d\u00a0 Anti-abolitionists\u2019 reasons for slavery, the idea that black people are subhuman and that conquest is noble, are revealed by More to simply be savage justifications.\u00a0 The other purpose of these lines is to rally support against anti-abolitionists by insulting them and separating them from abolitionists.\u00a0 More unites people who are anti-slavery by revealing that there is a \u201cbad guy\u201d and they deserve to understand what it feels like to be \u201cconquered.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Hannah More\u2019s 1788 abolitionist work \u201cSlavery: A Poem,\u201d she writes \u201cThe unconquered savage laughs at pain and toil, \/ Basking in Freedom\u2019s beams which gild his native soil\u2026 \/\/ And thou, white savage\u2026\u201d on lines (123-125).\u00a0 Within these lines, she utilizes the word \u201csavage\u201d twice to refer to white people.\u00a0 This word choice serves … Continue reading Savage<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4747,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spring-2023"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4747"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}