Washington Black: Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis

Wash flashes back to when he is five years old, when the quarters-woman first sends him to live with Big Kit. He immediately loves and fears her. Big Kit towers over everyone and protects Wash from being spat on and bitten and struck by the other slaves—usually by fiercely attacking the others herself. Some nights she murmurs in her sleep in her native language, but the stories she tells Wash about her old life change every day. Wash adores Big Kit, as well as her songs and stories, because she is a witness to a free world that he has never known.

During Erasmus’s second week at the plantation, he dismisses the overseers and replaces them with rough men—usually ex-slavers or ex-soldiers. Soon the maiming begins. The overseers cut slaves’ tongues out, force a girl to eat from a full chamber pot she didn’t clean thoroughly, and burn a slave alive for trying to run away. Other killings follow—they hang, whip, and shoot the slaves. Witnessing these deaths, Wash cries at night, but Big Kit does not.

To Big Kit, death is a door, and she does not fear it. She explains to Wash that in her faith, the dead are reborn in their homelands to walk free. One night in their hut, Big Kit tells Wash that she wants to kill herself and him—she will do it quickly, so it doesn’t hurt. She tells him that he will be reborn in his homeland, but Wash is hesitant—he doesn’t think he has a homeland. She assures him firmly that he will come with her to Dahomey, where he can be free. He asks her what it’s like to be free, and she says that a person can do whatever they want when they’re free—they can go anywhere and do anything. Wash wonders what this kind of autonomy would be like.

Days pass, and the atmosphere at the plantation grows harsher, but Big Kit doesn’t kill Wash yet. She tells him that it has to be done under a certain phase of the moon, with the right words, and she instructs him not to speak of their intentions. But soon, other suicides begin, as other slaves believe that they will be reincarnated as well. One man cuts his own throat with an axe; another punctures his wrists.

One day, when a boy named William hangs himself in the laundry room, Erasmus gathers the slaves together. Everyone is frightened as Erasmus studies them. He dumps William’s body onto the ground, explaining that he knows many of the slaves believe that they will be reborn in their homelands when they die. Wilde then takes out a large knife and saws off William’s head, driving it onto a post. Erasmus says that no man can be reborn without a head, and he will do this to every person who commits suicide. Looking up at Big Kit, Wash sees the despair in her eyes.