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Part 3, Chapter 3
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 tries to avoid conflict, but this is difficult with an aggressive friend like Medwin, so he keeps more and more to himself. Each morning, he brings an easel and paints to an inlet, where he steps into the tide pools to grab some sea creature to draw. On one particular morning, as he wades out, he notices a man standing on the shore, looking at him. Wash is alarmed, but when the man sets up his own easel, Wash is relieved.
Wash returns not only to art, but also to scientific discovery. He studies the scientific world by examining marine life and then draws it in order to capture it more fully. In Wash’s world, science and art have always gone hand in hand as a way to explore the world’s natural mysteries.
Themes
Wash’s art is his one pure pleasure and his one freedom, when he is able to control his time and activity. And so it bothers him that the man sets up so close to him, and continues to do for the next few days. The man waves to him on the third day, and Wash realizes that he's being selfish to deny the man his own pleasure. One morning, the stranger approaches Wash as he is sketching a hermit crab, remarking on how talented Wash is. Wash looks up and realizes that the stranger is actually a woman in oversized clothes and a man’s hat, with tanned calves and her left hand in a cast.
Art feels like “freedom” to Wash because it allows him to determine his own time. It also provides him with a distraction from his fear of Willard or other people who might attack him, which is one of the reasons why he finds this stranger so threatening. Freedom is not just physical liberty, therefore—it is also emotional and mental ease.
Themes
The woman introduces herself as Tanna Goff, and Wash introduces himself as well. She jokes about his name, while Wash simply stares at her golden skin with dark freckles. She is not entirely a white woman, and her small stature makes her seem vulnerable despite her strong speech. She seems older than him—perhaps 19 or 20. She asks if he’ll teach her to paint, saying that she’ll pay him; Wash agrees despite his distress at losing his solitary mornings.
Tanna, like Wash, is immediately set apart for her skin color and features, as he recognizes immediately that she is not a white woman. Thus, the book hints at how Tanna, too, is ostracized and belittled because of her race.
Themes
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Every morning, Wash and Tanna wade out into the tide pools together. He points out the sea creatures while she tries to memorize their features. Tanna is comical and blunt, and she tells him about herself. She was born in the Solomon Islands; her mother died giving birth to her. Her wrist was broken two months earlier, and she is frustrated by the restriction on her movement. She asks many questions about him, and he’s flustered at her attention and her desire to get to know him. But despite her prying, he tells her little and instead focuses on teaching her to paint.
Here, Wash starts to take on the role that Titch took on with him—mentoring Tanna through both art and science. However, Wash is unwilling to tell Tanna much about himself, which the book implies is because he is either ashamed or afraid of revealing his past. This shows how Wash’s past is ever-present in his mind, and it is also preventing him from developing real relationships and love with others.
Themes
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Wash is surprised at how much he grows to enjoy Tanna’s company. One day, he is embarrassed to learn that she has a greater knowledge of sea creatures than he does, but she comforts him when he discovers this, placing her hand in his. Wash is unused to receiving such overt interest from a woman, and to feeling desire in return. Tanna asks how Wash got his scar, and he wants to step closer to her, but he glances worriedly at the shacks in the distance and returns to their painting, pulling his hand away.
Here, the book shows how Wash and Tanna are beginning to fall in love. It is also notable that Tanna seems to understand and love Wash because of his scar and knowing that he is likely ostracized by others, not just in spite of it. However, it is Wash’s past that makes him want to avoid Tanna as he worries about who might see them, again showing how difficult it is for Wash to escape his past trauma.
Themes
