The Slave's Dream

In the poem “The Slave’s Dream” Henry Longfellow creates a very detailed and vivid story about a slave that dreams of the Mother Land and wishes that he was there once again, instead working on a rice plantation. Longfellow does this beautifully. He simply yet pushes the want to escape, by the use of fancy figurative language. Although he does not go into as much details as Hawthorne, the author of “Scarlet Letter,” did but, Longfellow does enough to create a vivid story line.
The use of figurative language in this poem is abundant. Longfellow starts out the poem by setting the present scene, the slave is laying beside the ungathered rice. This is very simple and not very detailed but because it is known that the poem is referring to a slave the thought of ungathered rice is connected to a rice plantation in the hot sun, this creates a visual without actually saying it. Next a little description of the man is mentioned. There isn’t a real description of the slave but we know that because he works on a plantation with out a shirt it implies a typical dark skinned “slave”; especially with “matted hair”.
It then goes into the slave’s dream. The reader sees what he sees, “he saw his Native Land” (Longfellow 6). In his Native Land he sees “the lordly Niger” flow (Longfellow 8). The adjective “lordly” signifies the greatness, the importance of the Niger. Lords are great and ever so powerful. That’s how the slave felt about the Niger. So from this simple word you visualize a enormous river that is rushing and could sweep anyone off of their feet. Shortly after this the slave refers to a king and a queen. Clearly in this slave’s dream he is the king. After this it is established that the king and queen have children. This may mean that the slave has children that he had to be separated from when he was sold into slavery. Maybe even the children and his wife were sold into slavery as well. This would be very tragic for someone to deal with. In the dream when the children kiss the cheeks of the king “a tear burst from the sleeper’s lids” (Longfellow 17). This would confirm this assumption for the reader. The slave may have lost his children and wife and misses them and that if he could he would treat them like royalty.
Longfellow then starts to add more affects to the storyline; he begins to incorporate more color and even the use of animals that would be found in the “Native Land”. As the king rode along the bank of Niger River on his stallion, the golden reins signified wealth and also provide more visual. Then Longfellow compares the bright flamingoes with a very eye catching “blood-red flag” (Longfellow 25). This simile exaggerates the suddenness and extent of the color of the flamingoes. Longfellow then uses another visual perspective, not just sight but sound. “At night he heard the lion roar” (Longfellow 31). He used sound and also another animal. He continues to use different animals and incorporate their sounds to signify just what the slave would hear and how he pictured everything happening. “The hyena scream” (Longfellow 32). We all recall the Lion King Movie and know how crazy the hyena sounds so this pertains to the hearing sense. The river-horse crushing reeds, was compared to the sound of the “glorious roll of drums”.
At the end of the poem Longfellow mentions “and his lifeless body lay a worn-out fetter, that the soul, had broken and thrown away!” (Longfellow 46-48). This ending is another variation of the way that Longfellow uses figurative language. This quote describes how tired the slave was from all of the work he has done, physicall, mentally, and emotionally. He is broken and has been thrown away. He is so tired that in earlier lines he did not even notice the heat of the scorching sun or the whip of the driver.
Overall Longfellow used a lot of simple words that related to something bigger than itself which helped the reader further understand just how the slave thought and saw things as well as how they felt. The story line was simple yet very complex!