1) The theme of the poem is to tell the effect Christianity had on slavery! Throughout the poem the speaker uses the words "God" and "Jesus" to show their belief in the lord and his son. Christianity was very important to people during this time, because people believed that God would come to their rescue. If they believed that God would rescues them from their hard times, then they wouldn't believe things would get worse. So in this poem, the author had showed that Christianity had such a big affect on these people, so the reader knows they believed that religious beliefs would get them through their tough time! We can tell this because in the middle of the poem the speaker asks, "why do you not help us?" This shows that the speaker wants God to help them during their time of struggles.
2) The speaker in this poem is a slave. You can tell this by looking at the simple words. In this poem it has words like "we," in the third third line! This shows that "we" is the speaker, and not someone describing it from the outside. You can also tell by the word "us" in the seventh line! As you can see the speaker is the ones describing the scene, as she or he lives it out.
A passive voice construction contains a form of the verb to be (or to get) plus a past participle of a transitive verb. It expresses an action carried out on the subject of the sentence.
