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Act 1, Scene 3
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Gem of the Ocean, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Meaning of Freedom
Economic Exploitation
The Value of Community
History and Trauma
The Power of Belief
Summary
Analysis
Black Mary talks to Aunt Ester in the kitchen while washing vegetables. Aunt Ester critiques the way she’s washing the vegetables and tells her that the fire she built is too hot. When she leaves, Citizen comes in and tries to flirt with Black Mary. He starts out by telling her that he couldn’t wait until Tuesday for Aunt Ester to wash his soul. But Black Mary claims that only God can do such a thing—Aunt Ester can only help him if he’s willing to help himself. Before he leaves, he asks her to visit his room that night, saying that she must—as a woman—need a man. But she teases him by suggesting that he won’t be able to give her anything she hasn’t already had.
There’s a certain loneliness to Citizen’s current situation. He has only been in the North for a handful of days, and he has already started to feel defeated by life. It therefore makes sense that he would seek out Black Mary’s company and affection, perhaps hoping that she’ll make him feel better about his otherwise lonesome life. But Black Mary is Aunt Ester’s protégé, and she seems to take this opportunity to subtly teach Citizen some of the lessons that Aunt Ester herself will later spell out for him: namely, that he needs to come to terms with himself in order to feel better.
Themes
As she teases Citizen, Black Mary lets him embrace her. She agrees to come see him in his room that night, but then she points out that they’ll both still wake up in the morning, at which point Citizen will realize that his life is the same. He will, she says, “wake up and look at [his] hands and see what [he’s] got.” In response, he says that he only has himself, and she says, “That ain’t never gonna be enough.”
Black Mary implies that Citizen needs to find a way to feel at peace with himself; he needs to stop seeking external ways of feeling better about his life. If he keeps trying to soothe himself by turning to other people (like, for instance, Black Mary), he’ll never manage to come to terms with his own problems. When he wakes up in the morning after making love, he will feel a sense of hollowness and disappointment, since his problems will still be there, which means he’ll still have to deal with them.
Themes
