Life's Pleasures Quote by Jupiter Hammon

It reads like consent, but it’s really a pressure gauge. Hammon sketches a tidy chain of dependence - food, drink, clothing, “comfortable things” - then tightens the loop with the blunt conclusion: happiness is impossible without pleasing “our masters.” The sentence is domesticated, even courteous. That’s the point. In an enslaved society, frank anger could be fatal; moral persuasion had to travel disguised as practicality.

Hammon’s intent operates on two levels at once. On the surface, he’s acknowledging the plantation’s economy of survival: enslaved people’s basic needs are controlled by owners, so compliance becomes a rationed form of safety. But beneath that acknowledgment is an indictment of a system that turns emotional life into a managed resource. “Happy” here isn’t joy; it’s permission. The line exposes how slavery doesn’t only seize labor, it colonizes the inner weather, making contentment contingent on another person’s approval.

Context matters: Hammon, an early African American poet writing within Christian frameworks, often addressed both Black and white audiences. This phrasing can sound like accommodation, yet it functions as a mirror held up to masters. If your power reaches so far that someone’s happiness depends on “pleasing” you, then your rule is not paternal; it’s total. The quietness is strategic. By adopting the language of dependency, Hammon smuggles in the more destabilizing truth: a society that requires performed gratitude from the unfree is spiritually bankrupt, and everyone involved knows it.