Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Copper Sun, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Slavery, Dehumanization, and Resistance
Horror vs. Beauty
Friendship
Memory and Storytelling
Gender, Race, and Power
Summary
Analysis
As the rowboat gets closer to the ship, Amari knows this place is a place of death. She can’t see the top of it. Two women grow hysterical and leap together into the sea. The soldiers toss nets out to catch them, but before they can, two huge fish surface, and one woman screams—one of the fish has the woman’s arm. The women sink under the surface. Amari is stunned. Her captors whip the women still in the boat, and no one else tries to leap. Soldiers watchfully guide the women up a plank, and once onboard, Amari is amazed: there’s a small city on the ship. Men run around shouting and moving barrels and boxes. They all carry weapons. Someone whips Amari until she follows the other women to a hole in the floor. Amari is certain that she’s entering the underworld.
The “fish” in this passage are almost certainly sharks, the presence of which makes it clear that it’s not just the white men that Amari and Afi have to worry about. The journey itself is extremely dangerous, and there’s little hope that slaves who defy or resist will return slaves to their homes in one piece. In this sense, even though the slavers didn’t intend for the two women to jump and die, those women likely taught the other captives a lesson that’s very useful for the slavers: that resistance is futile. If slaves believe this, they’ll stop trying to escape—effectively giving up on their humanity.
Themes
Amari wishes she’d breathed more fresh air outside, because the hold smells like sweat, vomit, and urine. She stares in disbelief at the male slaves, who are shackled together and lie on narrow wooden shelves. There are several layers of shelves, and each man has about six inches of headroom. The men on the lower levels are already splattered with blood, urine, and feces of the men above them. Not wanting to see Besa, Amari turns away.
The gross inhumanity of what Amari sees of the men’s conditions drives home just how horrifying the slave trade was. It’s clear that the men are in danger of dying due to disgusting, unsanitary conditions on the ship and might never even make it to the colonies—illustrating just how little regard the slavers have for the slaves.
Themes
The guards chain the women in a separate location, but the women aren’t stacked and have fresher air. There are some children. Amari discovers that the people on the ship came from all over Africa. She briefly wishes she had Kwasi to hold, but she doesn’t want him to experience any of this. She listens to the white men laugh far above, and then things begin to slow down. Afi begins to sing an old Ewe funerary song, and most of the other women join in.
The funerary song allows the women to find a sense of community with each other and collectively mourn the lives they’ve lost. In addition to grieving for their dead loved ones, they can also grieve for their own fates—and doing this together, in their native language, helps them feel a sense of community and solidarity.
Themes
