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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
Weeks after arriving in London, Wash catches a chill, and within hours he is too weak to stand. Tanna creeps in every few hours and makes tea for Wash, lying beside him on his bed. Coming in and out of consciousness, Wash calls out for Big Kit. He also recalls an earlier weekend, when he and Tanna waded into the ocean at dawn and he floated on his back, watching the stars fade and the sun rise.
Wash’s sickness connects him to the octopus once again—in both their cases, being displaced from their homes leads them to fall severely ill. This illustrates how Wash’s constant wandering is hurting him deeply, as he never feels truly able to belong. Part of this is spurred by the fact that he no longer has resolution about his past with Titch, and so part of his journey is spurred by his desire to confront his past and find that resolution.
Themes
Some time later, Wash wakes, his fever finally broken. He goes out for a walk and thinks again of Titch, and how casually the man discarded him though Titch was Wash’s only tie to the world. Walking into the storm was just another act to rid himself of Wash. Wash knows that Tanna is right: that Titch’s actions, in the end, were more telling than his words of kindness, because he abandoned Wash when he wasn’t useful anymore. Even though Titch said they were equals, perhaps equality between them was truly impossible, since Titch saw slaves as people to be saved.
Wash himself starts to realize how traumatic Titch’s actions were—the pain that he caused Wash, who was like a family member to Titch. In addition, though he claimed to support Wash and tried to pursue freedom for the enslaved people, Wash recognizes that Titch only viewed Wash as something that he could fix, teach, or save. In other words, Titch seemed to think that Wash didn’t deserve true equality on his own merits. In this way, the book shows that racism can manifest in more than just cruelty: overcoming it requires white people to truly view people of color as equals.
Themes
Wash returns home to a note from Tanna inviting him to dine in the main house. Wash starts to draw forcefully, recalling his memories of Faith Plantation. He draws the huts, the bright frogs, the stony paths, the frogs in the grass, the redwoods. He draws the boulder on which men were whipped, the knife marks in the tree’s bark where men had been pinned there by the throat, and the grasses where men’s bodies rotted. And he draws Wilde Hall, pristine above it all, with a clear view to the sea.
Just as Wash sketches nature to understand it better, here Wash uses drawing to try to understand Faith Plantation better. Again he is struck by the fact that it has so much natural beauty, but alongside this beauty it carries the trauma and pain that the enslaved people endured there. This is not so different from the way that Wash has to reckon with his relationship with Titch, as Titch gave him many opportunities but also caused him severe trauma.
Themes
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