Hannah Lee
Expo E-25 Academic Writing and Critical Reading
Prof. Lisa A. Gulesserian, PhD
This excerpt from “The Dead Book,” about girl who was murdered on a slave ship, seems to turn on its head by revealing the girl’s desire for death in the penultimate section—thus, like the jury in the story, acquitting the Captain accused of the murdering of the girl. However, using imagery, syntax, and diction, Hartman argues that despite the girl’s decision to kill herself, her attempt at suicide serves only to give a shred of dignity and autonomy to the girl. Ultimately the Captain kills the girl both by isolating her and by beating her.
Hartman’s use of visual imagery illustrates her decision from the very beginning to not eat and to die. The metaphor “the wish, which had taken root in the holding pen in Calabar” is described as having “blossomed” and depicts the girl’s decision to not eat as a flower, illustrating the hope of freedom from bondage and eternal life she seeks in death (151). Despite the depictions of the girl in previous sections of the chapter, we feel her sense of hope and possibility. Initially when reading the chapter, we believe the story is about the murder of a slave girl, but we see in the section that tells the story from the girl’s perspective that she in fact chooses death, complicating the circumstances of her death. Was she murdered or did she commit suicide? When we get to the girl’s perspective, Hartman reveals a conscious, resolute, and active internal thought process. The girl makes a decision. The girl saves herself and yet, she still dies a brutal death. Hartman’s use of a flower as a metaphor for her vow to not eat contrasts with the reality of the environment in which the girl makes the decision. “Holding pen” denotes something used to cage animals in, not human beings. A delicate flower contrasts with a filthy pen where livestock is confined. A flower is not concerned with being caged. In the same way, the girl feels incapable of being held down. Her capture is irrelevant to her if she stays committed to her starvation. Moreover, this quote “the wish…Calabar” reveals a key detail—that the girl was committed from the moment she steps aboard The Recovery to eat or drink nothing. In other words, no matter what “torments” the captain “inflicted” she had already made her decision that she would eat nothing (151). Her decision to not eat and her decision to die is made prior to boarding the ship, not as a result of the treatment she received aboard. By showing this perspective, the author reveals that the girl chooses to die, and in doing so, appears to lift the burden of sole culpability and responsibility from the Captain, or the Doctor, or the insurance adjustor, or any one individual involved.
Instead the girl’s death seems to be the failing of everyone, of the general public, whose interest in the scandal is piqued by the risqué drawing circulated, but withers with the general consensus that the death of the girl—and the practice of slavery—was a necessary evil to sustain a prosperous empire. At the time the story takes place, slavery is accepted by the masses of United Kingdom citizenry, who are initially scandalized, and even amused by the portrayal of the captain whipping a naked, voluptuous slave girl. The girl’s self-starvation seems to be an indictment of this system worldwide, not only against the captain. It appears the girl’s yearning for death is a result of this entire well-oiled machine that society has established for profit, not just the captain’s abuse. On the outset, the chapter appears to point the finger to no one person, but rather to the whole of English society and its uneducated, uncaring beneficiaries—for they have allowed slavery to exist. Just as the jury acquit the captain for the girl’s death, Hartman seems to exonerate the Captain: it is against an accepted system that commodifies human beings to chattel that the girl is to be protesting against, using a hunger strike as her voice and her body the sacrifice. No matter what the Captain did, no matter who the Captain was, the girl had already decided she would not eat.
However, using tactile and visceral imagery, Hartman depicts the unbearable reality of the torture she suffers, not only by the captain’s hands, but by his isolation of her while she starves. The reader wants to believe the girl decided her own fate. The reader wants to believe no one is at fault, and we can point the finger at the whole of society and recite platitudes about how the English people who decided to exonerate the captain should know better, and that it is up to society to build a better system. But through tactile imagery Hartman reveals the utter brutality with which the Captain tries to whip her into submission. An example of tactile imagery, the metonym of “the hands [that] swarmed….and pinched…and stabbed…and nipped...and strangled…and stuffed their claws...so that she could hardly breathe” describes the tortures inflicted in the night (151). The food she refuses to eat is squished between her fingers making noises “like a foot stuck in mud” (151). This simile demonstrates that her hunger has caused her to become sluggish, but further, she is also unable to continue living because the burden of slavery prevents her from desiring to do so (151). Her belly is “bloated” and “stretched tight like the skin of a drum”: the hunger has caused her belly to be distended with starvation (151). Viscerally, too, Hartman wants her readers to empathize with the girl: “the thing gnawing her intestines took a ferocious bite”; by anthropomorphizing hunger deep within the girl’s gut Hartman gives us a picture of what hunger is physically doing to the girl’s body (152). Hartman describes the “leaden feeling” that radiat[es]…spread[s]” and causes her to “nearly [collapse] from its weight” and causes her “legs” to “[crumple]” (152). Not only is she describing hunger here, but she is also describing the energy sapping effect of social rejection. The women are forced to “[dance]” as she “lay dying” (152). The “sound” of “one hundred forty-eight women pound[ing] the deck” “enter[s] the girl’s body in small tremors” (152). The other womens’ exclusion of her initiates small convulsions through her frail body, as she can viscerally, physically experience her social isolation—despite it being her decision from the very beginning.
Meanwhile, Hartman use of acoustic, sound imagery describes the short periods of euphoria she feels due to starvation. ‘The “din in her head” disables her ability to understand words being spoken and the “world clamored”…“in the jumble of sound, she discerned…the barked orders of the captain…canvas whipping in the air...cities of the dead laughing and crying out” (152). The “din in her head” separating her from her external environment reflects her contemplation of suicide, but also illustrates the pain she suffers, causing her mind to disassociate from her body as she begins to die (152). The noise is loud, deafening almost, but her resolve has silenced the commotion. But can it be considered resolve when the girl is incapable of thinking logically and just wants to escape? The details of the sounds and the imagery of her milieu reflects the delirium that fasting has caused. Can a girl who is mad with hunger make any fair decision about her own life, after it has been put in the hands of the Captain?
Indeed, by revealing that the girl wanted to die, Hartman grants the girl a smidge of autonomy and control—she determined her own fate, the Captain did not; but even though we the reader want to believe Hartman, her syntax reveals that the girl did not truly want to die. She was simply choosing the lesser of two evils: slavery or death. By setting up this dichotomy where the girl only has two choices with her life, and then keeping her captive, the Captain vicariously chooses to murder the girl.
Moreover, Hartman’s use of syntax—one long sentence with many clauses followed by a short terse sentence—condemns the captain; the first time this syntactical strategy is utilized it is used to describe the torments he inflicted. Hartman describes “the hands” “that were trying to kill her” with a long list of abusive verbs, followed by a series of short sentences: “They plucked her eyes out. They tore off her limbs” (151). Although her eyes are revealed to roll to the back of her head and her limbs grow back by the morning, the hyperbolic short sentences illuminate what the torture feels like—what she felt when she was hung upside down by her appendages and whipped before a crowd.
Further, the second time Hartman’s use of syntax condemns the Captain is demonstrated by the length of the sentence describing a period of bliss, which illustrates the hope she finds in her momentary “bouts of elation” (151). The sheer length of the sentence to represent a blip in time shows she does not truly want to die. Beginning with literal sounds “in the jumble of sound” and ending in a hallucinated sound “the cities of the dead laughing and crying out” followed by an abrupt transition to a terse sentence: “she had discovered a way off the ship,” the length of her sentences clearly contrasts life and death, depicting a finality that is of forced, contrived bravery (152).
Similarly, the third time there is a long sentence followed by a short sentence, Hartman again uses syntax to illustrate the girl’s uncertainty about her suicide. The girl questions what will happen to her in the afterlife. The girl’s indecision about wanting death is depicted by the syntax of the paragraph that questions what will become of her in the afterlife if “the gods might be angry” or “the ancestors might shun her” (152). This long sentence with many clauses is followed by a short terse sentence: “when the boys plummeted into the sea, they had made leaving look so easy” (152). The juxtaposition between the long and short sentences reveals the girl’s hesitation about her suicidal fast.
Finally, Hartman’s use of infantilizing, inebriated diction illustrates that despite her conviction and strength in her decision to commit suicide, she is not equipped to make such a fateful decision. Hartman describes the girl’s “head” as being “tilted to one side as if she were listening to someone at the same time” (151). It is as if she has the look of a puppy dog with her head cocked in a question. At a time that she needs guidance and direction she is abused and led astray. Like a shepherd leading its sheep to slaughter the Captain leads his ship of slaves to the slave markets, and in his hands, he holds the girl’s will to live. Instead of leading her to life, he nudges her to her suicide, pushing her further over the edge with his torment and isolation. The girl is described as being “dreamy and intoxicated” as a result of starvation which has deteriorated the girl’s mental capacities and disabled her of thinking clearly, even in her moments of seeming conscious lucidity.
At the same time, Hartman’s use of elevating diction illustrates the author’s desire to grant the girl autonomy and even reimagine her as royalty, a picture that clashes with the stark reality of the girl’s desperation and brutalization. The choice of words to describe the girl during one of her moments of ecstasy: “unoccupied, disburdened, sovereign” displays that the author wants to give her autonomy, almost to make her a queen: “as though she had found a country of her own” (151). It is as if Hartman wants to elevate the girl, who has been maligned in history. No matter how much Hartman wants to rewrite the story to give the girl a shred of dignity, the author cannot change history. She wants to give her some humanity back—in fact, crown the girl a queen. Yet comics of the girl’s death are drawn and she is discussed in gross, salacious ways. Her murder is used for different purposes: for entertainment, for political purposes. Another instance of elevating diction, Hartman describes the girl’s ethereal aural experience as “rapture”, which connotes spiritual experience as “the Rapture” refers to a religious notion of Jesus’s return (151).
Thus, through visual, tactile and visceral, and aural imagery; syntax with a long sentence followed by a short, terse sentence; and infantilizing and elevating diction, Hartman reveals the girl is not capable of making the decision about whether she lives or dies and does not truly want to die anyway. The Captain is guilty of holding the girl captive, isolating, and brutalizing the girl which ultimately leads to the girl’s death. The death of the girl can be blamed on society but ultimately the responsibility lies with the Captain, just as systemic racism can be blamed for the death of Breonna Taylor, although she was ultimately killed by the policeman. Breonna Taylor, like the slave girl, was also used for political purposes, for entertainment, for a myriad of uses but never received justice—she is dead. In a moment of contention between a civilian and a policeman, both parties are in fight-or-flight response, but only one party wields all the power and authority—the policeman. The other party is merely accused, and innocent until proven otherwise. Hartman may want to give the girl in “The Dead Book” a modicum of justice and reparations by reimagining her place in history. Yet nothing can change the past, and the tradition of unjustifiable deaths with no repercussions to the person in power before an indifferent public continues to this day.
Work cited:
Hartman, Saidiya. Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route. “The Dead Book.” Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008, pp. 151-52.