Slave-life: An Ill-fated Circle of Existence

By Christina Weir Thorpe

Lack of enlightenment and autonomy of the negro slave lends to the doomed cycle of existence in Marlon James’ The Book of Night Women.  Repetitive language and imagery portray the slaves as uneducated, uninformed, and seemingly without choices, their lives circumscribed by the demands of their white owners.  Partway through the novel, the narrator utilizes these literary devices to reaffirm the ill-fated circumstances of the Jamaican slave:

Everything negro walk in a circle… And when a negro walk, light get take away from him so he never know when he hit a curve or a bend.  Worse, he never see that he walking round and round and always come back to where he leave.  That be why the negro not free (188).

The life of the negro slave is devoid of the episodic “light,” or awareness that allows one to persevere in a life shrouded forever in darkness.  Without this illumination of circumstances, the slave cannot foresee his path changing or “curv[ing]” or “bend[ing]” away from progress to circle in oppression.  Every attempt by the slave to enhance this hopeless existence and escape the savagery extended to him pushes him further along this enslaved cycle.  Not only is the slave blind to his circumstances, this knowledge or "light [that] get take away" further demonstrates the slave's lack of autonomy.

          For Lilith, this cycle commences in adolescence and perpetuates in her attempts to rise in the hierarchy of servitude.  Though she is out of the fields and into the safety of a higher position as a house slave, Lilith’s actions return her to the lowly existence of the condemned.  She fails to recognize she “hit a curve” or the futility of her efforts until she is brutally raped and repeatedly whipped.  Too late, she realizes her fruitless endeavors for autonomy; for a negro slave cannot be free.