Paper 4 on Toni Morrison’s A Mercy & its Political Fictions
Set in the American colonies (Virginia) in the 1680s, it tells of an Anglo-Dutch trader, Jacob Vaark, who gathers around him no fewer than four traumatized girls.
First he buys Lina, a Native American survivor of a smallpox epidemic, to help manage his household.
Then, after negotiating another “sale,” he marries Rebekkah, a 16-year-old English girl whose parents always treated her with “glazed indifference.”
Then he takes in a young orphan called Sorrow.
Finally he accepts, as payment for a debt, a slave girl called Florens.
Jacob Vaark dies of with smallpox and Rebekkah is then ill, too, Florens is sent on a journey to find a free black man who did iron work for Jacob on his estate. It is believed that the free black man has shamanistic powers that will cure Rebekkah, if he can be found and sent to them in time.
The novel is organized into loose “chapters” (although not marked or labeled) and each one is in a character’s voice re-telling an episode in their lives.
As an essential theme, Morrison has said, the novel explores various kinds of human enslavement and wants to present a portrait of slavery in America that pre-dates the pre-occupation with the narrative about African slavery.
Paper 4 Assignment
You will choose ONE character or chapter, the one most interesting and fascinating to you, for a discussion on the following:
Describe the living conditions, the rootless-ness and the social place of the character you have selected. Identify important elements that show why and how these conditions exist. Explain the political fictions that dominate their lives – real or imagined, explicit and implicit – and the impact on these human lives to overcome any barriers at all.
Consider these scenes:
You are not limited to these scenes but are strongly encouraged to select one of them for the paper.
- Jacob visits the Portuguese merchant and notices the rich home and reluctantly accepts Florens as payment for a debt.
- After Jacob becomes sick, the four women must face threats from outside the farm. Their will to face these threats puts them in very real danger.
- On the journey to find the free black man, Florens is taken in for the night by a white villager and her daughter. She encounters powerful images of hatred and humanity.
- Scully and Willard live in a foggy non-existence without any family, property, aspiration or attachments. They are friends to each other. Their survival is unlikely in the face of bondage, scarcity, deprivation and ignorance.
- Rebekkah's voyage from England to Virginia is complicated and also revealing in the ways people faced enslavement and bondage. Her humanity is salvaged first by her cabin-mates on the ship and then by her good fortune in being "sold" to Jacob.
You will bring to class on Thursday, November 19, TWO typed copies of the draft of this paper for peer review (warm/cool feedback) and the basis for our class discussion.
