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Chapter 3
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
Amari loses count of the days. Her neck, ankles, and wrists are bruised and raw, and her feet are bloody. Several captives die along the journey, including Esi, not long after she miscarries her baby. On occasion, other groups of slaves join Amari’s group. The path grows wider and more traveled until finally, they arrive in the city. Amari marvels at all the different people, their many skin colors, and the many languages she hears. Everyone in the city, however, turns away from the group of slaves. The air feels salty and Amari can smell a huge, frightening body of water. She begins to recognize some of the words of her white captors, like “slave,” “price,” and now, “Cape Coast.” Realizing that she’s never going home, Amari weeps.
Under any other circumstances, being in a city for the first time would give Amari the opportunity to look around with wonder at all the new things. But because of the way that people in the city react to the group and because of the words she recognizes, this experience instead impresses upon her that everyone and everything she once knew is gone. Her ability to learn the white men’s language, however, is a useful skill. Knowing what’s going on will help Amari temper her reactions to new situations and to protect herself.
Themes
The slaves approach a huge white building and a white man ushers them into the darkness. It smells like blood and death. Amari’s captors separate the men from the women and take their shackles off, but Amari’s relief is short lived. They shove her into an even darker room filled with dozens of women. It stinks of waste, sweat, and fear; few even acknowledge Amari and the other newcomers’ presence. Amari sits and notices that there are women from many tribes here. She wonders if their captors killed these women’s families too. As she looks around, she notices a woman rocking a baby that isn’t there. Amari is grateful when guards toss bread into the room, but by the time she reaches it, it’s all gone. She drops and weeps, but a large woman sits next to Amari and offers Amari some of her own bread.
Seeing women from so many different tribes begins to impress upon Amari and the reader the magnitude of the abductions that took place in Africa to fuel the transatlantic slave trade. This also implies that although the Ashanti may have been the ones who brought Amari and her village to this town, they might not be safe from slavery either, given how indiscriminate the other abductions seem to have been. Meanwhile, the large woman’s kindness suggests that even in the darkest of situations, Amari can find hope and friendship.
Themes
The woman tells Amari that she must steel herself and learn to sing again. The woman answers Amari’s questions: this is Cape Coast Castle, a prison for their people until they’re “sold and sent into the sea.” Amari is confused and insists that she has no value, but the woman says that white men will purchase Amari to work for them during the day and entertain them at night. The woman knows this because she’s been sold before. Her master, a white man in this city, sold her to men here. She watched other captives leave through a small door that heads to the sea, but a guard took a liking to her and she now goes to him at night. It’s awful, but she knows her spirit is too strong to die here. Amari begins to sob, and the woman holds her.
Amari, understandably, has been raised to think of herself as just a normal young woman. As a 15-year-old girl, she believes she has little to offer, since thus far in her life she’s only been asked to perform chores for her family and village. Amari’s sense of horror at realizing that others will exploit her for her body and her labor represents a loss of innocence for her. Now, she cannot escape the reality that humanity can be ugly, cruel, and unfeeling—and that as a Black woman, there are endless opportunities for those in power to abuse and exploit her.
Themes
