Washington Black Themes

Washington Black focuses on Wash, who, at the start of the book, is an 11-year-old boy enslaved on Faith Plantation in Barbados in 1830. As a child, Wash struggles to understand the concept of freedom, which he has never known himself. Big Kit—an enslaved woman who was once free—states that freedom means going wherever you want and doing whatever you want. But even when he escapes the plantation and travels around the world…

As the book is set in 1830, the 11-year-old protagonist, Wash, faces racism both when he is enslaved on a plantation in Barbados and when he later escapes to places like Nova Scotia and London. On the plantation, Wash and other enslaved people are treated as less than human, beaten, and killed for no reason. Yet even when Wash escapes slavery with the help of an abolitionist white man named Titch, Wash realizes…

George Washington “Wash” Black, who is 11 at the beginning of the book, grows up enslaved on a plantation in Barbados, never knowing his family. The closest he ever gains to a family is an enslaved woman, Big Kit, who is like a mother to him; Titch, Wash’s master’s brother, who is like a father to him; and lastly, a young woman named Tanna, who becomes his lover. Ultimately, Wash discovers…

When an 11-year-old enslaved boy named Washington Black meets Titch, his master’s brother, Titch introduces him to the world of art and science. Titch shows Wash various plant and animal life on Faith Plantation, while Wash teaches himself how to sketch these creatures after seeing Titch’s sketches. Both of these disciplines spark Wash’s immense curiosity, and the book weaves in passages of Wash’s observations of the natural world around him and his attempts to…