Friendship Theme Analysis

Over the course of Amari’s march as a captive from her home village in Africa to an oceanside city, where she begins her journey across the Atlantic to be sold as a slave in the Carolinas, nearly all her friends from her village die. Seemingly alone, Amari must find and foster friendships with other women along her journey, first with a fellow captive woman named Afi and later with Polly, a white indentured servant about Amari’s age who also serves Mr. Derby. While Amari’s friendship with Afi develops easily and comfortably, Amari and Polly’s relationship—and Polly’s friendships with the other Black slaves with whom she lives—is much slower to develop. By exploring how these different friendships take root, the novel makes it clear that friendship can happen anywhere—but only when both individuals are willing and able to recognize others’ humanity, and that the other is worthy of care and respect.

Over the course of Amari’s journey, she begins to realize that friendship is necessary if she wants to survive. She first begins to realize this on the forced march from her village to the coastal city, over the course of which many of her friends die of disease or fatigue—or in the case of one young woman, a horrific miscarriage. Thus, when Amari arrives at the coast, she enters the holding building for female slaves totally alone and very afraid. By a stroke of luck, however, Amari ends up seated next to an older woman named Afi who, without asking any questions, takes Amari under her wing, offering advice and support as they begin their journey west to the colonies. Afi’s care of and concern for Amari is, Amari believes, the main reason why she survives the journey and feels able to go on. However, it’s worth noting that their friendship develops easily because they share so many qualities: they’re both women, they’re both Black and soon to be slaves, and they’re from neighboring tribes. If both parties are willing, this suggests, it’s not difficult to make meaningful friendships with a person if they have enough in common with each other.

Amari’s relationship with the indentured servant Polly, however, takes much longer to develop, mostly because Polly is so very different from Amari. Amari and the other Black slaves understand that as an indentured servant and as a white woman, Polly will one day be able to assimilate into white society—a privilege that none of the slaves will ever have. And for that matter, because Polly is white, she believes that she’s better than her Black companions, even though she performs the exact same work and reports to the Black slave cook, Teenie. Resentment and distrust simmers on both sides—the slaves don’t like Polly and she doesn’t like them—especially since Amari’s owner and the holder of Polly’s indenture, Mr. Derby, puts Polly in charge of “civilizing” Amari and teaching her English. Both young women, however, soon find common ground: Mr. Derby, they agree, is cruel, unfeeling, and treats everyone who isn’t a white male like they’re possessions—and his son Clay is even more entitled, full of himself, and cruel than his father is. Polly and Amari’s friendship, in this sense, begins due to mutual hatred of their master, not necessarily out of genuine interest or affection for each other.

Gradually, though, simply through spending time together, talking with Teenie, and learning about each other’s lives, respect and genuine care begin to grow between Polly and Amari—and between Polly and the Black slaves more generally. Polly begins to view the Black slaves as her friends when she learns that after a disastrous spill in the dining room, Amari will be sent out to work in the rice fields. There, slaves only survive an average of five years due to the prevalence of waterborne illnesses, snakes, and alligators—and though before, Polly thought it was right and expected that slaves work in rice fields, she now cannot bear the thought of her friend performing backbreaking labor and inevitably dying an early, preventable death. Polly’s transformation and the girls’ developing friendship speaks to one of the novel’s most important ideas: that while friendships may be easier to form when people share many qualities and, in particular, have undergone many of the same experiences due to the color of their skin, that’s not the only way that friendships form. Rather, friendships can form between any two people as long as they are each able to regard the other with genuine curiosity and to acknowledge their dignity and humanity.