Religious Hypocrisy

One of the themes throughout the entirety of the poem is the hypocrisy exhibited by religious people, particularly Christians, and the ways that this hypocrisy led them to turn a blind eye to the evils of slavery and their role in perpetuating the system. In the first stanza, Hayden alludes to Shakespeare’s passage in The Tempest, when he writes “of his bones New England pews are made, / …altar lights that were his eyes” (18-19). In Shakespeare’s work, he describes the effect of a shipwreck and presumed death of Ferdinand’s father, writing “Of his bones are coral made; / Those are pearls that were his eyes”. Crucially, Hayden’s decision to make the pews the recipient of the slaves’ bones ties his criticism of the slave trade to the form of Christianity practiced by the sailors. The pews are a physical item that will...