Copper Sun: Chapter 7 Summary & Analysis

As the rowboat gets closer to the ship, Amari knows this place is a place of death. She can’t see the top of it. Two women grow hysterical and leap together into the sea. The soldiers toss nets out to catch them, but before they can, two huge fish surface, and one woman screams—one of the fish has the woman’s arm. The women sink under the surface. Amari is stunned. Her captors whip the women still in the boat, and no one else tries to leap. Soldiers watchfully guide the women up a plank, and once onboard, Amari is amazed: there’s a small city on the ship. Men run around shouting and moving barrels and boxes. They all carry weapons. Someone whips Amari until she follows the other women to a hole in the floor. Amari is certain that she’s entering the underworld.

Amari wishes she’d breathed more fresh air outside, because the hold smells like sweat, vomit, and urine. She stares in disbelief at the male slaves, who are shackled together and lie on narrow wooden shelves. There are several layers of shelves, and each man has about six inches of headroom. The men on the lower levels are already splattered with blood, urine, and feces of the men above them. Not wanting to see Besa, Amari turns away.

The guards chain the women in a separate location, but the women aren’t stacked and have fresher air. There are some children. Amari discovers that the people on the ship came from all over Africa. She briefly wishes she had Kwasi to hold, but she doesn’t want him to experience any of this. She listens to the white men laugh far above, and then things begin to slow down. Afi begins to sing an old Ewe funerary song, and most of the other women join in.