The form of Wheatley’s poem draws on a model quite familiar to the educated white population in both Boston and London. “America” is executed in carefully measured heroic couplets, two lines of 10 beats each, with five units of unstressed and stressed beats known as iambic pentameter. The heroic couplet can be traced back to classical epics, thus creating an association between the form and serious (or, occasionally, mock-serious) themes. The British Neo-Classical poets whom Wheatley read and greatly admired often used the heroic couplet as their foundational form.

In using heroic couplets and adhering to popular metrical conventions of the time, Wheatley presents America’s rise and its struggle against Britain as something worthy of epic, suggesting that America may have both a just cause and a heroic destiny. In terms of her own poetic reputation, employing these forms with confidence also bolstered her own literary credentials, allowing her to display her own erudition while announcing herself as a poet worthy of serious consideration by her peers.

To illustrate the tense dynamics between England and its American colonies, the poem uses personification. The speaker transforms England and America into a mother and son, depicting the political dispute between the nation and its overseas colonies as being akin to that of a familial dispute between kin. This tactic frames the dispute in a more emotive and vivid way, with America turned into “the Best of Infants” (Line 16) of England’s overseas possessions and England becoming the “dear mama” (Line 21) who mistreats her offspring. While the choice of a mother-son personification evokes the literal blood ties between many American colonists and their English forebears (See: Symbols & Motifs), it also enables Wheatley to discuss complex political issues in a more direct and simplified way, presenting America’s grievances as mirroring those of a hurt son. This brings a sense of pathos to the colonies’ plight.