Broken Families Theme Analysis

The Water Dancer depicts the ways in which slavery corrupted and destroyed the families of enslaved people. It mainly does so by exploring one of the most harrowing aspects of slavery: family separation. All of the enslaved characters in the novel have family members who have been sold (while some have been sold themselves), creating permanent separations. The novel also shows how families are broken by slavery through the prevalence of rape of black women by white men, creating “illegitimate” relations between enslavers and the enslaved, such as between Hiram and his white father Howell and half-brother Maynard. Yet even as the novel exposes the many ways in which slavery destroys families, it also highlights the ways in which enslaved and free black people form new relationships of love and care in the place of broken family ties. While this does not heal the trauma of family separation, it constitutes a moving and powerful way of life that enables black people to survive and fight for freedom.

The novel shows that part of what is so devastating about family separation is that love and family are some of the only ways in which enslaved people can experience dignity, care, and joy in the midst of the horrors of slavery. Many of the instances of joy in Hiram’s life occur within a family context, including Rose and aunt Emma water dancing together (a form of dance performed by enslaved people) and Rose telling him stories about Africa at night. When Rose and Emma are sold, two of the precious few sources of joy in Hiram’s life disappear.

At the same time, the novel also shows that joy can come from relations between people who aren’t biological family. For example, when Thena becomes a surrogate mother figure to Hiram, it soothes him. In part because of the way in which slavery destroys connections between biological family members, enslaved people form kinship networks with people outside their immediate families. Unfortunately, these relationships are just as often severed by the separations enacted by enslavers.   

Separation, however, is not the only way in which families are broken by slavery; another significant way is through widespread rape and its impact on family networks. Hiram knows that he is the son of the master of Lockless, Howell Walker, and therefore knows that he was conceived when Howell raped Rose. As if this weren’t traumatic enough, Hiram must also deal with the fact that his father sold his mother and continues to enslave his own son, forcing him to work as a manservant for his half-brother, Maynard. Hiram illustrates the particular pain of being held enslaved by your own family members with the words, “all I wanted was to be home and free of Maynard’s voice, though I could never, in this life, be free of him. Maynard who held my chain. Maynard, my brother who was made my master.” This quotation highlights the perverse impact slavery has on families, corrupting what should be bonds of love and care into dynamics of abuse, servitude, and degradation.

Although the novel’s main focus is on how black people are harmed by slavery’s destruction of families, it does highlight that this phenomenon harms everyone, including the white enslavers who enact it. Howell claims to feel restricted by social norms, which prevent him from loving Rose and Hiram in the way he would like. He tells Hiram that he is not “permitted” to give him much, and later in the novel admits that he regrets selling Rose. Of course, while Howell may indeed feel pressured by the racist norms of his time, he is still responsible for complying with them. Yet his expressions of regret show that the damage that white people inflict on familial relations during slavery also becomes a form of self-harm. The racist ideology undergirding slavery is so powerful that it leads white people like Howell to destroy their own families.

There is no redemptive arc when it comes to the novel’s depiction of broken families; the impact of slavery on familial relations is shown to be a wound that will never heal. Yet the novel also strongly emphasizes that constant separation encourages enslaved people to form new ties of care and support with one another, and even to see all black people as part of the same family. Indeed, the idea that all black people are family emerges in contrast to the biological relations that exist between white people like Howell and black people like Hiram—relations that, far from encouraging love and care, are often conduits for cruelty. Thena emphasizes this idea when Hiram goes to work in Howell’s house as a young teenager. She tells him, “They ain’t your family, boy. I am more your mother standing right here now than that white man on that horse is your father.” Here, Thena shows that biological ties do not mean much given how white enslavers pervert and destroy them. What is more important is the sense of connectedness and care that emerges among all black people to counter this destruction of the family.

The book repeatedly emphasizes how the destruction of the family encourages the enslaved characters to remain open to loving other black people to whom they are not biologically related. While the formerly enslaved Otha is grieving his separation from his wife and children, he also mentions that new and improvised relationships beyond his biological family help sustain him: “I lived divided from my blood, and made brothers wherever I lived, and grieved every time we were divided—and we were always divided. But I have never, for an instant, shied away from connection, from love.” Otha’s final words show how important it is for him to remain open to love even after the endless repeating trauma of being separated. There is no cure for being torn away from loved ones, but the inevitability of separation makes it even more important that the enslaved characters in the novel are able to develop new relationships of love and care.