The Circle of War in “The Book of Night Women” by: Abby Booher

Marlon James expresses the idea of a negro slave’s life through the phrase, “Every negro walk in a circle […] He can’t walk like the freeman and no matter where he walk, the road take he right back to the chain, the branding iron, the cat-o’-nine or the noose that be the blessing that no niggerwoman can curse” (p. 120). This concept proves to be important to the narrator’s mind because it was stated before – “Every negro walk in a circle” (p. 33). This sentence emphasizes the point of the endless cycle which the negro slave faces. There is no escape from their life into which they were born. Their station in life, the violence, and the suffering will never end. The narrator describes it as a negro walking in an endless circle of darkness which causes them to stumble (p. 120). This provides the reader with a glimpse of the horrific life which the negro slave lived. To the narrator, the path only leads to more beatings and act of injustice against the slave. Though war is commonly thought of as a battle between two countries, war, in this case, is the battle between two defined “types” of people: the slave and the free. The violence inflicted on the slaves through the endless path of “the chain, the branding iron, the cat-o’-nine or the noose” is the terrible injustice inflicted by the free. Through the image of all negroes (and note that the narrator does not specifically mention slaves) walking in a circle for eternity, the narrator expresses another perspective of the horror or war in slavery.