’Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,

  Taught my benighted soul to understand – Phyllis Wheatley Brought to America

This is a satirical statement brought on by what the speaker was told by the Slave Traders. The slave traders put emphasis on how their actions saved the speaker, from their pagan land. Pagan is a term used to describe people who are not following the world’s popular religion which at the time this poem was written, Christianity held that power. Benighted means to be pitifully ignorant morally or intellectually. Benighted in the second line has a powerful meaning behind it because it is showing the audience that the slavers taught her morally ignorant soul to understand why they needed to be rescued by them; which cycles back to the first line calling being taken as a mercy.

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