An Ante-Bellum Sermon

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1895

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

Dunbar’s “An Ante-Bellum Sermon” consists of 11 stanzas of eight lines each, with an alternating pattern of octosyllabic (eight syllables) and heptasyllabic (seven syllables) lines. While the poem does include rhyming throughout, the rhyme scheme varies depending on the stanza. The first, third, fifth, eighth, and ninth stanzas follow an ABCBDEFE rhyme scheme, and the fourth, tenth, and eleventh stanzas follow an ABABCDED rhyme scheme. The second, sixth, and seventh stanzas follow ABCBCDDD, ABCBCDED, and ABCBDDED rhyme schemes, respectively. Although there are common patterns and recurring rhyme schemes in many of the stanzas, Dunbar employs a somewhat irregular rhyme scheme to reflect his speaker’s spontaneous and excited preaching style.

The poem is also written entirely in Dunbar’s approximation of the Black Southern dialect. The poem features hybridized words like “a-judgin’” (Line 49) and “a-handin’” (Line 52), shortened words like “’splain” (Line 6) rather than “explain,” and grammatically incorrect contractions like “I’se” (Lines 48, 51, 52) and “we’se” (Line 87). The dialect and the poem’s simultaneously parallel and irregular rhyme scheme accurately replicate the exciting, dynamic, and at times humorous sermon the speaker delivers.

Dialect

A popular, racist archetype during Dunbar’s time was the almost childlike and ignorant Black speaker. White writers often employed this figure to demonstrate the supposed inferiority and stupidity of the Black race. In doing so, they used dialect, a phonetically written representation of regional accents, to caricature and satirize Black people. However, one of the trademarks of the poetry of the African-American Dunbar was his use of dialect. Although dialect was often a racist and demeaning tool used by white writers, Dunbar’s use of dialect in “An Ante-Bellum Sermon” and other poems is much more nuanced and more difficult to quantify.

While many literary critics have accused Dunbar of being complicit in and perpetuating the racist literary forms of his day, Dunbar’s poetry and characters are not so easily dismissed. Like these racial caricatures, the speaker of “An Ante-Bellum Sermon” expresses his message in heavily accented and colloquial speech. He uses contractions, leaves off the “ing” endings of words like “foolin’” (Line 13), uses hybrid words like “a-preachin’” (Line 34) and “a-trompin’” (Line 75), creates words like “Bibleistic” (Line 72), and pronounces words ending in “er” with an “ah” sound, like “mastah” (Line 47) and “thundah” (33). While these were all elements of the dialect typically found in parodies of Black speech at the time, Dunbar was not attempting to demean or belittle his preaching protagonist. His intention was to authentically replicate the accent of Southern Black people. His preacher is no fool regardless of his dialect. He understands and reinterprets Scripture to explain his environment, he cleverly disguises his intentions from his white masters (Lines 37-40, lines 69-72), and he has a strong conviction of his righteous cause and a faith that God will avenge his people. Therefore, Dunbar appropriates this dialect and the archetype of the foolish Black speaker and subverts it by demonstrating the inherent intelligence and virtue of his speaker, whom white people would dismiss solely for something petty like an accent. Dialect is important for Dunbar’s subversion of racist opinions as well as a vital aspect of his authentic portrayal of the people in the ante-bellum South.

Foreshadowing

One of the literary devices that defines Dunbar’s poem “An Ante-Bellum Sermon” is foreshadowing. Foreshadowing is a literary technique in which the writer hints at what will unfold in the future of a story, and it can often contain elements of irony. In “An Ante-Bellum Sermon,” Dunbar’s speaker keeps preaching that “some Moses” (Line 31) will come and set the Black slaves in America free. Of course, in the ante-bellum period when the pastor is preaching, this prediction of future salvation is based upon his understanding of scripture and his belief that God’s “ways don’t nevah change” (Line 44). However, in the post-Civil War era of Dunbar’s time when he wrote this poem, the preacher’s faith is not merely a prediction but hindsight from the future. Dunbar lived in a period in which the Civil War and President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which declared the freedom of all slaves in the Southern states, had already occurred. While his ante-bellum speaker can only hope and long for his race’s future freedom and “liberty” (Line 84), Dunbar and the poem’s readers understand that that freedom did indeed come. The recurring foreshadowing of the eventual deliverance of the Black slaves is somewhat ironic in that the audience is aware of something that the protagonist cannot possibly know.