In Gem of the Ocean, the meaning of “freedom” is in dispute. While none of the play’s characters are legally enslaved, they struggle to understand whether they’re actually free. In the most literal sense, this means economic freedom. Citizen Barlow shows this best; the local mill intentionally saddles him with debt so that he has to work to make up for it, effectively forcing him to provide free labor. Structurally, this isn’t all that different from enslavement. But simply breaking out of this debt cycle isn’t enough for the characters to feel free. For example, Solly’s own freedom means nothing to him if those around him still suffer. After he escaped enslavement, he realized he couldn’t enjoy his life because his loved ones were still enslaved, so he devoted himself to freeing people by working on the Underground Railroad. And later, he gives his life to free striking mill workers from jail, implying that his life wasn’t worth living while others weren’t free. For him to experience freedom, then, everyone must also experience it, not just a lucky few.
The play also examines a more spiritual kind of freedom by suggesting that people have to be “right with themselves” in order to lead happy and rewarding lives. What it means to be “right” with oneself remains ambiguous, but it seems related to integrity and “living in truth.” When Garret Brown dies in order to prove he didn’t steal a bucket of nails, for instance, Citizen—who actually stole the nails—feels tormented by his own guilt. He’s technically a free man, but it’s as if he has been imprisoned by his own remorse over what happened with Garret Brown; he is not, in other words, “living in truth.” It isn’t until he owns up to what he did that he can finally move on, indicating that there’s an emotional element to freedom: there’s literal freedom, which has to do with leading a life free of exploitation and oppression, and then there’s spiritual freedom, which has to do with emotionally liberating oneself by living honestly and acting with responsibility.
Related Themes from Other Texts
The Meaning of Freedom ThemeTracker
The Meaning of Freedom Quotes in Gem of the Ocean
CITIZEN: He could have come out the river.
AUNT ESTER: That’s the only way he had to say he was innocent. It must have meant an awful lot for him to say that. He was willing to die to say that.
CITIZEN: I was standing there. I seen him. I thought he was gonna come out. I told myself he was gonna come out. […]
AUNT ESTER: Jesus Christ was falsely accused. He died a bitter death on the cross. This man was like Jesus. He say he would rather die innocent than to live guilty.
They say they was paying two dollars a day but when we got there they say a dollar fifty. Then they say we got to pay two dollars room and board. They sent us over to a place the man say we got to put two dollars on top of that. Then he put two men to a room with one bed. […] I asked one fellow what board meant. He say they supposed to give you something to eat. They ain’t give us nothing. I say okay. I can’t make them give me nothing. What I’m gonna do? I got to eat. I bought a loaf of bread for a dime. A bowl of soup cost ten cents around the corner. I wasn’t desperate. I had sixty-five cents to make it payday. I ate half the bread and say I would get a bowl of soup tomorrow. Come payday they give me three dollars say the rest go on my bill. I had to give the man what own the house two dollars. What I’m gonna do, Miss Tyler? I told the people at the mill I was gonna get another job. They said I couldn’t do that ’cause I still owed them money and they was gonna get the police on me. I was gonna go to another city but then before I had a chance I killed a man.
ELI: Freedom is what you make it.
SOLLY: That’s what I’m saying. You got to fight to make it mean something. All it mean is you got a long row to hoe and ain’t got no plow. Ain’t got no seed. Ain’t got no mule. What good is freedom if you can’t do nothing with it? I seen many a man die for freedom but he didn’t know what he was getting. If he had known he might have thought twice about it.
I’ll tell you whose fault it is. It’s Abraham Lincoln’s fault. He ain’t had no idea what he was doing. He didn’t know like I know. Some of these niggers was better off in slavery. They don’t know how to act otherwise. You try and do something nice for niggers and it’ll backfire on you every time. You try and give them an opportunity by giving them a job and they take and throw it away. Talking about they ain’t going to work.
Went down to the bank to borrow some money. They told me I needed some collateral. Say you need something to borrow money against. I say all right, I’ll get me some collateral. I opened me up a gambling joint in the back of the barbershop. Sold whiskey. The police closed it down. I had to put some bullet holes in a couple of niggers and the police arrested me. Put me on the county farm.
He didn’t care if anybody else knew if he did it or not. He knew. He didn’t do it for the people standing around watching. He did it for himself. He say I’d rather die in truth than to live a lie. That way he can say that his life is worth more than a bucket of nails. What is your life worth, Mr. Citizen? That’s what you got to find out. You got to find a way to live in truth.
BLACK MARY: What’s the two pennies for? Why he got to find two pennies?
AUNT ESTER: That’s only to give him something to do. He think there a power in them two pennies. He think when he find them all his trouble will be over. But he need to think that before he can come face to face with himself. Ain’t nothing special about the two pennies. Only thing special about them is he think they special. He find them two pennies then he think he done something. But, he ain’t done nothing but find two pennies.
They talking about keeping the colored out of Pennsylvania. Say, “What do we need them for?” One man say they ought to send them back down South. I come on past the general store in Rankin and they was talking about, “Why can’t we have slavery again?” One man said ’cause of the law. And somebody said change the law. The man asked him, “Would you fight another war?” And he said, “Hell yeah.”
I was in Canada in 1857. I stood right there in Freedomland. That’s what they called it. Freedomland. I asked myself, “What I’m gonna do?” I looked around. I didn’t see nothing for me, I tried to feel different but I couldn’t. I started crying. I hadn’t cried since my daddy knocked me down for crying when I was ten years old. I breathed in real deep to taste the air. It didn’t taste no different. The man what brought us over the border tried to talk with me. I just sat right down on the ground and started crying. I told him say, “I don’t feel right.” It didn’t feel right being in freedom and my mama and all the other people still in bondage. Told him, “I’m going back with you.” I stopped crying soon as I said that. I joined the Underground Railroad.
If you gonna do it…do it right! They wave the law on one end and hit you with a billy club with the other. I told myself I can’t just sit around and collect dog shit while the people drowning. The people drowning in sorrow and grief. That’s a mighty big ocean. They got the law tied to their toe. Every time they try and swim the law pull them under.
SOLLY: […] It’s dangerous out here. People walking around hunting each other. If you ain’t careful you could lose your eye or your arm. I seen that. I seen a man grab hold to a fellow and cut off his arm. Cut it off at the shoulder. He had to work at it a while…but he cut it clean off. The man looked down saw his arm gone and started crying. After that he more dangerous with that one arm than the other man is with two. He got less to lose. There’s a lot of one-arm men walking around.
ELI: That’s what Caesar can’t understand. He can’t see the people ain’t got nothing to lose.
SOLLY: […] I knew all them guns wasn’t on account of me. I figured they was fighting for themselves. And if that would help them that would help us.
ELI: They never said they was gonna help us. They said the war was gonna help us. After that it be every man for himself.
SOLLY: I told them you get what’s in it for you and I’ll get what’s in it for me. You get yours and I’ll get mine and we’ll settle the difference later. We still settling it.
CITIZEN: I don’t know. Sometimes I lay awake at night when I be lonely and ask myself what I would say to her. Sometimes I tell her to stop being lonely. I tell her it’s something she doing to herself. But then I’m laying there lonely too and I have to ask myself was it something I was doing to myself? I don’t know. I ain’t lonely now. I ain’t got no woman but I still don’t feel lonely. I feel all filled up inside. That’s something I done to myself. So maybe I did make myself lonely.
BLACK MARY: You got to be right with yourself before you can be right with anybody else.
Yeah, I burned it down! The people might get mad but freedom got a high price. You got to pay. No matter what it cost. You got to pay. I didn’t mind settling up the difference after the war. But I didn’t know they was gonna settle like this. I got older I see where I’m gonna die and everything gonna be the same. I say well at least goddamn it they gonna know I was here! The people gonna know about Solly Two Kings!
You see, Mr. Caesar, you can put the law on the paper but that don’t make it right. That piece of paper say I was property. Say anybody could buy or sell me. The law say I needed a piece of paper to say I was a free woman. But I didn’t need no piece of paper to tell me that. Do you need a piece of paper, Mr. Caesar?
These ain’t slavery times no more, Miss Tyler. You living in the past. All that done changed. The law done changed and I’m a custodian of the law. Now you know, Miss Tyler, you got to have rule of law otherwise there’d be chaos. Nobody wants to live in chaos.
They laid him low. Put him in the cold ground. David and Solomon. Two kings in the cold ground. Solly never did find his freedom. He always believed he was gonna find it. The battlefield is always bloody. Blood here. Blood there. Blood over yonder. Everybody bleeding. Everybody been cut and most of them don’t even know it. But they bleeding just the same. It’s all you can do sometime just to stand up. Solly stood up and walked.
He lived in truth and he died in truth. He died on the battlefield. You live right you die right.
