The speaker, before a passive spectator, becomes an active participant in the institution of slavery. Though he assumes this insidious role, he insists that he only does so to demonstrate the real worth of the slave because the bidders “cannot be high enough for it,” (99). The fact that the speaker refers to the male slave as an ‘it’ throws in a contradiction to what he goes on to say in the succeeding lines of the poem, praising him for his supposed actual worth. He dehumanizes the slave by reducing him to an object, of unimaginable worth nonetheless. However, despite this, the speaker lists off attributes of the slave that carry real
The speaker, before a passive spectator, becomes an active participant in the institution of slavery. Though he assumes this insidious role, he insists that he only does so to demonstrate the real worth of the slave because the bidders “cannot be high enough for it,” (99). The fact that the speaker refers to the male slave as an ‘it’ throws in a contradiction to what he goes on to say in the succeeding lines of the poem, praising him for his supposed actual worth. He dehumanizes the slave by reducing him to an object, of unimaginable worth nonetheless. However, despite this, the speaker lists off attributes of the slave that carry real