Answer:
Sure.
The ship stops on the way to New Orleans, picking up four more slaves. Among them is a slave named Arthur. Like Solomon and Robert, Arthur is a free man with a family and was kidnapped and sold into slavery. When the ship departs again for New Orleans, the captain appoints Robert as his waiter and Solomon as the overseer of the cooking department. Solomon is also made to distribute food and water twice a day. At night, the slaves are “driven into the hold and securely fastened down.”
Arthur’s story of being kidnapped echoes that of Robert and Solomon, pushing the reader to recognize the widespread distortion of justice that permeates the nation. The slaves are once again compared to livestock, as they are “driven into the hold and securely fastened down” like horses or cattle being kept in the barn for the night.
ACTIVE THEMES
Racism and Slavery Theme Icon Truth and Justice Theme Icon
A violent storm descends upon the ship, and many of the slaves wish that the “compassionate sea” would drown them, saving them from “the clutches of remorseless men.” Solomon tells his reader not to judge him for any of his actions that follow in the narrative, writing: “Let not those who have never been placed in like circumstances, judge me harshly.”
Answer:
true
Explanation:
Speaker
"Alone" is a retrospective poem, which means that it's a poem told by a guy looking back on his childhood. This complicates the whole speaker issue. The guy who is actually speaking in the poem is, of course, an older, more mature version of the guy he's describing. However, the speaker is also that younger child that he describes in the poem. It's almost like he temporarily transports himself back in time and reassumes his former identity.
So let's talk about the younger version of the speaker a little bit, because that's who dominates the poem. Now, this isn't a poem about bullying or getting made fun of, but the kid in the poem feels completely alone and isolated. His tastes, passions, and even his sorrows are completely different from everybody else's.
The speaker of this poem isn't just some lonely guy, however. He's also special. He's alone, sure, but because of that he gets to experience a kind of "mystery." We don't know exactly what this is—it is a mystery, after all—but we get the feeling that it's not entirely a bad experience. The speaker associates this mystery with powerful, inspiring views, ones that only he can see. That makes things seem just a little better now, doesn't it?
The last thing we have to tell you is that this poem is very autobiographical, which means it is one of many places where Edgar Allan Poe talks about himself, reflecting Poe's own sense of his difference. He was orphaned at a young age (his father took off before he was born and his mother died when he was very young), and he generally felt out of place. "Alone" very openly describes the young Edgar Allan Poe, and his own feelings of both isolation and inspiration.
