An Explication of Philip Freneau's "To Sir Toby"
             The basis of Philip Freneau's poem, "To Sir Toby" is slavery on the islands of the Caribbean. Throughout the poem Freneau used vivid imagery and descriptive language to illustrate not only the inhumane practices of slave owners, but also his distaste for the practice as a whole. Freneau was vehemently opposed to slavery on every level, from purchasing people as property, to branding them, to torturing them like animals. The poem serves as a very passionate piece about the wrongs of slavery as well as the brutality of it.
             From the very beginning of the piece, Freneau related the island to hell, presenting a very hostile feeling in the opening of the poem. With "If there exists a hell – the case is clear - Sir Toby's slaves enjoy that portion here," Freneau set the mood of the piece as hellish and brutal (Freneau 802). With this same hellish tone, Freneau continued on to describe the slave owner as a "fiend" who brands his property upon arrival. This reference to the slave owner as a "fiend," identified him as the leader in this hell, the demon in charge of the grotesque activities that took place there. Freneau also commented that "nature must detest" such a thing, a human branding another human, indicating that the acts of these people were simply unnatural and inhumane (Freneau 802). To further express his opinion of the slave owners, Freneau compared them with insects and other disgusting species of nature in saying, "Here Nature's plagues abound, to fret and tease, Snakes, scorpions, despots, lizards, centipedes-." With such a comparison Freneau suggested that these slave owners were one of the lowest things that nature has to offer, he implied that they were so despicable that they were ranked with insects and creatures that crawl along the earth.
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