Sam Reed

Professor Ford

ENGL 289

6 March 2023

The Existential War: David, Goliath, and the Plight of America’s Slaves in Phillis Wheatley’s “Goliath of Gath”

“The writings of Phillis Wheatley,” the scholar Philip Richards remarks, “have traditionally been seen as the beginning of African-American literature.” Yet despite the grand cultural and political significance of Wheatley’s contributions to the field of poetry — both as the second woman and the first black woman to publish a book on any subject in the Americas — much of Wheatley’s writing has been mired in historical misunderstanding (Shields, 1). Some critics have dismissed Wheatley’s work, like the works of other early American writers, as derivative of European styles (Shields, ix); and controversy has surrounded Wheatley’s treatment of racial issues, with others claiming that she “neglected almost entirely her own state of slavery” (Levernier, 172). In reality, although Wheatley’s style indeed borrowed much from the European traditions, her treatment of poetic techniques and methods was often in service of hidden critiques of slavery: turning the European styles against themselves, Wheatley wrote a poetry of implicit racial protest, even and although her peers may have been unaware (or unequipped) to its subtleties. In this way, the poetry of Phillis Wheatley can be seen as fiercely racialized at a time when African Americans — empowered by the Revolutionary War —began both to adapt to the new American culture and develop, at the same time, a growing racial consciousness (Richards, 163).

            Wheatley’s 1773 collection, Poems on Various Subjects, offers myriad examples of the ways in which her poetry, informed by her position as an American slave, critiques slavery in the context of the Revolutionary War. Fought for liberty and independence, the Revolution represented an ideal context for black Americans to advocate their own freedom in the face of ongoing racial oppression. In the “Goliath of Gath,” Wheatley’s retelling of the story of David and Goliath, the biblical myth becomes an allegory for the existential stakes of the war, both for the American people in general and for slaves in particular; and by showing the fate of American slaves as intimately tied up in the fate of the nation as a whole, Wheatley’s poem argues compellingly against slavery, at a time when such a view — particularly among slaves themselves — went largely ignored.

In his essay War and Representation, Frederic Jameson argues that depictions of war have fallen historically into eight categories of narrative representation: here, the focus will be on Jameson’s first variant, the so-called “existential experience of war” (1533). As Jameson describes, this narrative variant “most often expresses the fear of death and, a somewhat different thing, the death anxiety” (1534). As the most common and most quintessential form of war narrative, the existential experience is informed by an impending sense of mortality, real and perceived. Other common aspects of this variant of storytelling (“personal danger, decisions and hesitations, contingency, apprenticeship”), while popular in other war stories, are most prevalent here: plots of dangerous threats, or the growth and development of the narrative’s characters through adversity — often in the style of the bildungsroman — epitomize the existential war drama (1534).

These qualities distinguish the existential war variant — and incidentally, each is present in Wheatley’s “Goliath of Gath” narrative. Goliath’s introduction clearly establishes the life-and-death stakes of the Israelites’ battle with the Philistines. His entrance instills fear on the side of the Israelites, evoking the existential death anxiety: “He strode along, and shook the ample field, / While Phœbus blaz’d refulgent on his shield: / Through Jacob’s race a chilling horror ran… (lines 27-29). With the possibility to end “Jacob’s race,” the enemy’s forces threaten Moses’ experiments in establishing a new polity among the Israelites. The field shaking in his wake, Goliath’s stature literalizes the Philistine’s opposing strength; and his call for a contest with Israel’s strongest warrior — “Produce a man, and let us try the fight, / Decide the contest, and the victor’s right” — puts the outcome on a single confrontation (lines 39-40). David, then, must fight not only for his survival, but the survival of all the Israelites; as an allegory for the American context, the battle between the Israelites and the Philistines threatens the existence of the polity in much the same way that the Revolutionary War — fought for America’s independence from Britain — was a battle for the future of the nation itself.

As the narrative continues, other aspects of the existential variant come into play. Obviously, Goliath’s contest involves a great personal danger: David must fight for his own life, as much as for the lives of his fellow Israelites. David’s decision to go invokes hesitation: as the King questions, “Dar’st thou a stripling go, / And venture combat with so great a foe?” (lines 92-93) And upon returning from the battlefield, victorious against their foe, the young David grows into a formidable adversary: David, “came the glories of the field to try,” (line 216), returning a “young hero” in the eyes of the king (line 214).

But what, then, does Wheatley’s narrative mean for the American Revolution? Why has Wheatley chosen to center the existential experience of war? And what, if anything, does the poem have to say about slavery during this time?

In reality, these questions are closely linked. Wheatley’s poem stresses the stakes of the war, not just for the individuals fighting on the battlefield, but for the nation as a whole. When Goliath claims that his fight with the Israelites will decide the “victor’s right” — historically, the ability to enslave the losing side under the war doctrine — these stakes become the threat of slavery. As stressed in the angel’s warning to Goliath, however, God had already guaranteed David’s victory: “Rebellious wretch! audacious worm! forbear, / Nor tempt the vengeance of their God too far / Them, who with his omnipotence contend, / No eye shall pity, and no arm defend [...]” (lines 120-123). Still, Goliath refuses to heed the cherub’s warning: seeking victory over the Israelites, he continues into battle — only to lose his head by David’s sword. The Philistines, trying to impose their tyranny, are bound to lose; in the American context, the aims of the British are thus likened to the slavery of the Philistines. For God to be on the side of the Americans suggests that the cause of anti-slavery is the righteous one; and just as God rejects the enslavement of the Israelites, the American people are saved from the fate of tyrannical rule.

More than simply critiquing the tyranny of the British, however, implicit in Wheatley’s argument is a more subtle attack on black slavery as well: in Wheatley’s view, the existence of the nation depended not only on an elimination of foreign threats of tyranny, but a reconciliation with the continuing, tyrannical enslavement of the countless numbers of Africans imported from abroad. As Levernier notes, “Given the milieu in which Wheatley wrote, we can hardly expect her to have written an explicit poetry of racial protest” (174). Instead, he argues — to avoid the ire of Americans skeptical of anti-slavery — Wheatley’s poetry used techniques of subversion and irony to communicate her position without necessarily stating it outright. As Levernier points out, for example, Wheatley was abhorred by religious justifications for the institution of slavery; using a biblical story to confront issues of tyranny, then, Wheatley’s poem offers a subtle rebuke of the ways in which religiosity had come to define opposition to black freedom. “Whether she writes funeral elegies about New England’s Euro-American elite or patriotic lyrics on behalf of American independence” — or, in this case, a verse paraphrase from the biblical stories — “Wheatley’s central concern is freedom” (175). This includes the freedom of Americans “from the despotism of British tyranny,” as in “Goliath of Gath”; but it also means the freedom of black slaves to live and lead their lives free from racial tyranny as well (175). By drawing attention to freedom in all its forms, Wheatley’s writing unites its various causes; ongoing issues of American liberty and black emancipation are thus linked in Wheatley’s Revolutionary War poetry.

While never explicit, Wheatley’s poetry remains one of fierce protest: employing subversive techniques, Wheatley argued against the institution of American slavery at a time when such critiques — especially from a slave herself — would have been unthinkable. In “Goliath of Gath,” a biblical allegory for the Revolutionary War, Wheatley draws on the story of David and Goliath to emphasize the existential stakes of the fight for American independence. Facing British forces, the Americans stood to lose their freedom; but with God on their side, the righteous succeeded in the face of opposing tyranny. Goliath went to war to enslave his enemies — and lost, in a humiliating way. David and the Israelites succeeded; what then, for America’s slaves?

Works Cited

Jameson, Fredric. “War and Representation.” PMLA, vol. 124, no. 5, 2009, pp. 1532–47. JSTOR,

http://www.jstor.org/stable/25614383. Accessed 6 Mar. 2023.

Levernier, James A. “Style as Protest in the Poetry of Phillis Wheatley.” Style, vol. 27, no. 2, 1993, pp. 172–93. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/42946037. Accessed 6 Mar. 2023.

Shields, John C. Phillis Wheatley and the Romantics. University of Tennessee Press, 2010.

Richards, Phillip M. “Phillis Wheatley and Literary Americanization.” American Quarterly, vol. 44, no. 2, 1992, pp. 163–91. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2713039. Accessed 6 Mar. 2023.