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Part 1, Chapter 2
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Washington Black, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Freedom vs. Captivity
Racism, Humanity, and Cruelty
Journeying and the Past
Family, Love, and Pain
Art, Science, and Curiosity
Summary
Analysis
Wash then realizes he needs to begin again, for the record. He was born in 1818—or so he is told—on Faith Plantation in Barbados. But he also heard that he was born in a cargo hold on a Dutch vessel, which would have been in 1817. He doesn’t know which version of his origin story is true, though he often has strange dreams growing up about men yoked together or dark jungles.
Wash’s struggle to begin his story (not knowing where exactly to start) demonstrates that even in this unspecified future moment from which he is narrating, he is still trying to reconcile the fact that he doesn’t know his origins, or which experiences and memories have been the most formative for him. This suggests that even at a much later time, he is still grappling with his past.
Themes
At two years old, Wash starts weeding and tending the cane fields. When he turns nine, he gets a straw hat and a shovel and feels like a man. He doesn’t know his mother or father, and his first master, Richard Black, was the one who named him George Washington Black. The master said he glimpsed in Wash’s face the “land of sweetness and freedom.” This is before Wash’s face is burned, before he sails a vessel into the night sky, before he is stalked for a bounty on his head, before a white man dies at his feet, and before he meets Titch.
The fact that Richard Black named Wash after George Washington, the founder of a land known for freedom, is ironic, as he knew that Wash would likely spend his entire life in captivity. However, the list of events that Wash cites here hints at the fact that he does ultimately gain freedom, and again reinforces the idea that he is still wrestling with many of the events that led him to his adulthood.
Themes
