Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Gem of the Ocean, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Meaning of Freedom
Economic Exploitation
The Value of Community
History and Trauma
The Power of Belief
Summary
Analysis
When Aunt Ester comes home after posting bail, she goes straight to her room to lie down. Just as Eli sits down to take a moment to himself, Citizen rushes through the upstairs window and runs downstairs. He informs Eli and Black Mary that Caesar shot Solly. He then runs outside with Eli, and they come back with Solly’s body. Aunt Ester appears and tells them to put him on the table. As she sets to work trying to stop his bleeding, Citizen and Selig explain that they had reached West Virginia when Solly noticed a can of kerosene in Selig’s wagon. He announced that he wanted to go back and bust all the workers who were arrested during the riot out of jail—and then he wanted to burn the jail itself.
Yet again, Solly demonstrates his unwillingness to accept freedom for himself while others continue to suffer in bondage and oppression. In fact, he doesn’t seem to believe he can even experience freedom in the first place if everyone else doesn’t have it. For this reason, he won’t let himself escape to Alabama while the workers who rioted at the mill remain in jail—even though turning around obviously puts him in danger because Caesar is looking for him.
Themes
Solly didn’t feel right escaping to freedom when so many others weren’t free. On their way back, Caesar saw the wagon and started shooting at it, hitting Solly directly in the chest. Citizen worries that the only reason Solly got shot was because he didn’t have his lucky chain link, which he’d lent to Citizen. But Eli says he knows Solly will pull through, since he’s so tough. And yet, Solly passes away moments later as Aunt Ester, Black Mary, and Eli sing a hopeful song.
Solly ends up dying as a result of his uncompromising commitment to helping others overcome subjugation. In a way, his death is similar Garret Brown’s death, since both men died with integrity because they refused to submit to injustice. His death therefore aligns with Aunt Ester’s previous implication that it’s honorable to “die in truth,” which is like making the ultimate sacrifice to be “right” with oneself.
Themes
Citizen puts his two pennies in Solly’s lifeless hands. Eli says a few words about his life, noting that he never found the freedom he spent his entire life fighting for. But still, “he lived in truth and he died in truth.” After Eli’s brief eulogy, Caesar comes to the door and demands to know where Citizen is. Citizen hides before he comes in, and then Caesar addresses Selig, saying that he needs to get a statement from him, since he thinks Solly stole his wagon. He also vows to find Citizen, but then Black Mary jumps in and says she can’t stand being his sister anymore, disowning him as her brother—a statement that deeply wounds him and sends him speechless out the door.
Caesar’s inability to respond when Black Mary disowns him suggests that his familial bond with her was the only thing he cared about other than himself. However, his selfish willingness to work against his community and even kill people like Solly in order to uphold oppressive laws ultimately made it impossible for Black Mary to justify her relationship with him. In turn, the play implies that fiercely individualistic attitudes end up alienating people from their loved ones.
Themes
Once Caesar is gone, Citizen comes back out. Aunt Ester, Eli, and Black Mary sing a burial song as Citizen puts on Solly’s coat and grabs his walking stick. He also takes Solly’s hat and finds the letter from his sister inside of it. Putting the hat on, he leaves the house as Eli pours a drink and raises a toast to Solly.
At the very end of the play, Citizen symbolically becomes Solly, putting on his hat and picking up his walking stick in a way that suggests he will take up the old man’s legacy—just like Black Mary will someday continue Aunt Ester’s legacy. When he looks at the letter from Eli’s sister, it’s reasonable to assume that he plans to travel down to Alabama to make sure she’s all right, thus picking up where Solly left off. He has, then, undergone a total transformation throughout the course of the play, going from someone who thinks mainly of his own well-being to someone who willingly helps others.
Themes
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