Instead of generalizing, as she does when she discusses the hopes and history of the slaves in both America and Egypt, (never hitting on the topic), as is done throughout the entire middle portion of the essay, and paraphrasing the poem, as she writes in her final five paragraphs, I wish Erica Smith would have continued to cover the topic she began with, which was African-American spirituals, and used her space to introduce the readers to something we don't already know. .
Smith begins with the general topic of African-America spirituals and leads into the specific spiritual "Go Down, Moses". By the end of the first paragraph, she has touched on the "call-and-response" and "improvisation" styles of folk songs, and her essay seems to be focusing on the structure of the spirituals. From this point, Smith's essay only states the obvious when she introduces "Go Down, Moses" at a ninth-grade writing level:.
""Go Down, Moses" recounts the incident in the Old Testament of the Bible in which Moses led the Jews out of Egypt. Because these Jews had been slaves, African-American slaves felt a strong connection with their plight. They too yearned for freedom." (Smith 54).
Insight? I think not. Smith misses a good opportunity to introduce something new to the reader about "Go Down, Moses". Rather, she simply discusses how "these Jews" and the African-American slaves both wanted to be free. Anyone who is in captivity wants to be free, so instead of making an apparent point, I wish Smith would have discussed other less normal similarities between these two groups of people. One relationship that could have provided useful insight to the essay would have been that both groups originally came from the same general region. Maybe it was from this connection that the African-American slaves and the Hebrew slaves in Egypt not only shared the same experiences, but also reacted in analogous manners.
As Smith continues to touch briefly on the syntax of the poem, it would have been beneficial for her to compare it with another freedom call.
