Stolen Skills, Power, and Knowledge Theme Analysis

The Water Dancer draws on the common understanding that slavery is a system of stolen labor, and emphasizes that enslaved people were also robbed of their knowledge, skills, and power. It explores this point through showing all the ways in which enslaved people were more competent, talented, and knowledgeable than their enslavers, and by even depicting some of the characters born into slavery as having superpowers. Indeed, through this magical realist element of the novel, Coates emphasizes that it will always be impossible to know just how much was stolen from black people during slavery. This is because enslavers denied the existence of the forms of wisdom, talent, and power that enslaved people possessed, while at the same time robbing them for themselves. By exaggerating the skills that Hiram and other enslaved characters possess into actual superpowers, the novel reminds the reader that enslaved people had powers and talents that have been lost to history forever.

The novel illustrates the extent of the skills, power, and knowledge stolen from enslaved people by endowing the main character, Hiram, with superpowers. These extraordinary abilities take two main forms: Hiram’s superhuman memory, and his ability to travel through space in seconds, which in the novel is called Conduction. The fact that Hiram possesses these two skills in particular is significant, because they both represent things that enslavers disproportionately robbed from the enslaved. Slavery systematically denied enslaved people access to their own past—their memories—by transporting captives from their homelands in Africa, prohibiting African cultural and religious practices, separating families, and banning enslaved people from becoming literate. Meanwhile, slavery also confined the movement of enslaved people, keeping them captive on the plantations where they were enslaved and installing systems of surveillance in order to prevent people from fleeing. The fact that Hiram is capable of both extraordinary memory and extraordinary movement highlights the massive amount of skill stolen from enslaved people, and why it took such a particularly expansive and brutal institution to facilitate the theft of these skills. 

The novel also reverses the racist idea that black people had inferior abilities—an idea that was often used as a justification for slavery—by instead showing the opposite to be true. As Hiram explains, “The masters could not bring water to boil, harness a horse, nor strap their own drawers without us. We were better than them—we had to be. Sloth was literal death for us, while for them it was the whole ambition of their lives.” Hiram’s words show that logically, enslaved people were of course more capable than enslavers—slavery required them to be. While white enslavers made themselves more and more incompetent by depending so completely on the labor of enslaved people, enslaved people themselves gained more knowledge and skills, only to have them stolen through the system of slavery.

The contrast between the enslaved people’s skills and the enslavers’ incompetence emerges most prominently in the depiction of Hiram and his half-brother, Maynard. While Hiram is highly intelligent and even possesses superpowers, Maynard is unintelligent, lazy, incapable of taking care of himself, and prone to nefarious behaviors such as gambling and drinking to excess. Indeed, the fact that Maynard has such a skilled manservant in the form of Hiram makes him even more lazy and inept. By stealing the skills, power, and knowledge of the enslaved, white people like Maynard maintained a position of superiority yet further weakened themselves when it came to their own abilities.  

The novel also shows that because slavery was a system of exploitation and theft, possessing extraordinary abilities did not necessarily confer advantages for enslaved people (as would be the case in a more just social system). As a young boy, Hiram dreams that his intelligence and talent mean that he will eventually be installed as the rightful “heir” of Lockless, rather than his inept half-brother. Of course, the system of slavery means that this is an impossibility. Moreover, Hiram’s talent and intelligence cannot advantage him personally because under slavery, they are little more than ways to make more money for his enslavers. As Hiram reflects, “My genius would not save me, indeed my genius would only make me a more valuable commodity.” He may possess extraordinary skills, but he does not have ownership or control over these skills. As an enslaved person, exercising his own intelligence and skills can only work to benefit his captors.

The fact that Hiram is ultimately able to gain control over his skills through rebellion shows why slavery was a system doomed to fail. One group of people can only steal the intelligence, talents, and labor of another group for so long before such an exploitative and unsustainable system is overturned. At the same time, Hiram’s victory—using his abilities to liberate himself and others, and despite all odds becoming the “master” of Lockless when it becomes a station of the Underground Railroad—only further highlights the extent of what was stolen from black people under slavery. Even after his triumph, Hiram must keep his work secret so that he can continue the project of liberating enslaved people via the Underground Railroad. (This is of course also true of Harriet, who, like Hiram, is capable of Conduction, a skill she explicitly links to the time before slavery: “It is the old ways, which shall and do remain.”) The secrecy under which Hiram’s talents must be placed means that evidence of these talents never makes it into the historical record. Herein lies a particularly tragic element of the theft that occurred through slavery. Not only were wisdom, talent, and power stolen, but evidence of these abilities was erased.