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Chapter 9
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Copper Sun, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Slavery, Dehumanization, and Resistance
Horror vs. Beauty
Friendship
Memory and Storytelling
Gender, Race, and Power
Summary
Analysis
The next night, a skinny sailor rapes Amari and beats her. The night after, two sailors take turns raping her. The following morning, Amari spots Besa as the men come up on deck. He tries to make eye contact with Amari, but she feels ashamed that she’s not the innocent girl he loves anymore. She turns away. As the days pass, they become monotonous. The copper sun seems to imprison the captives and Amari grows to hate the white men’s drum. She stops smiling. The sailors rape women every night, and Amari’s only respite is when the red-haired sailor rescues her. Amari learns that his name is Bill, and he teaches Amari counting and some conversational phrases. Soon, Amari realizes she can understand more than she can speak. She runs through phrases in her head to keep from going mad.
The fact that Amari feels shame for having suffered rape ends up being a boon for her captors, whether they intended this or not. Her unwillingness to look at Besa—even though being raped wasn’t her fault—begins to deprive her of community and distance her from others on the ship who might be able to help her remember who she is and tell her that she’s valuable as more than a sexual plaything. Bill’s kindness and language lessons do the opposite: they remind Amari that she is human and that if she focuses on learning and moving forward, she can survive.
Themes
One morning, Amari wakes to see that a storm is brewing. The ship rocks, throwing the women about, and one woman’s young daughter falls overboard. The woman breaks free and tries to get the sailors to save her daughter, but they ignore her pleas. She leaps overboard. After this, the soldiers take the women below deck. It smells like the ship has never been cleaned, and Amari notices that the bottom shelves in the men’s quarters are mostly empty. Rats chew on some of the men who are too weak to fight back. Once she’s chained, Amari and many of the women vomit. The storm lasts for days. When it’s over, the sailors lead the women back on deck. Sixteen of the 90 women died during the storm, and the sailors toss the bodies overboard. Amari wishes that she’d died.
Given the way the sailors respond to the women during the storm, it’s clear that they care about them as valuable cargo, not as people. Refusing to rescue the woman’s child is cruel and inhumane—it reinforces that in the sailors’ minds, Black children aren’t worth trying to save or nurture. In the men’s quarters, Amari is reminded again that even if Bill might be kind to her, he’s an anomaly—and his reach only goes so far. Clearly, no one is showing any kindness or concern for the men, giving their horrible conditions.
Themes
