Gem of the Ocean suggests that belonging to a strong community adds meaning and worth to a person’s life. For Solly, community seems more important than his own existence. For example, after he escapes enslavement, he returns to the South to help free the people he cares about. It seems he cannot enjoy his own happiness and safety unless his community has those things, too. Solly also gives his life for his community; he burns down the mill to help the exploited workers who are on strike, and then he returns to try to free the workers who were jailed. Solly is shot while returning, which he knew was a possibility. This suggests that his own life is less valuable than the wellbeing of his community, and that he cannot live while those around him suffer.
Likewise, Citizen Barlow comes to Aunt Ester to be cleansed of his sins, and she does so by spiritually connecting him with thousands of enslaved Africans, essentially giving him an opportunity to experience a shared sense of suffering. Becoming embedded in this community causes Citizen to feel reborn, and from then on, he shares Solly’s moral commitment to risking his life for others. Citizen finally feels “right” with himself, suggesting that he couldn’t fully accept himself without first feeling like a part of a community. This contrasts with Caesar’s storyline, as Caesar advances himself at the expense of his community’s safety and happiness. And yet, his power and wealth mean practically nothing because nobody respects him or cares for him. His sister, Black Mary, even disowns him after he shoots Solly for burning down the mill. As a result, the prevailing sense at the end of the play is that people who turn their back on their community end up isolating themselves, while those who give their lives for their community find connection and meaning.
Related Themes from Other Texts
The Value of Community ThemeTracker
The Value of Community Quotes in Gem of the Ocean
They gonna have some more the way Caesar keep evicting people. He put out two more families yesterday. He charging by the week. They get one week behind and he put them out. He don’t ask no questions. He just gather up what little bit of stuff they got and sit it out on the street. Then he arrest them for being out there.
CAESAR: Are you a troublemaker, Citizen Barlow? You ever been in jail?
CITIZEN: I ain’t never been in jail.
CAESAR: That’s where you heading. You got to have visible means of support around here. If I see you standing around looking to steal something and you ain’t got two dollars in your pocket you going to jail. You understand? Get you a job and stay out of trouble. Stay off the streets.
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.
You don’t understand I give the people hope when they ain’t got nothing else. They take that loaf of bread and make it last twice as long. They wouldn’t do that if they didn’t pay one and a half times for it. I’m helping people.
I got memories go way back. I’m carrying them for a lot of folk. All the old-timey folks. I’m carrying their memories and I’m carrying my own. If you don’t want it I got to find somebody else. I’m getting old. Going on three hundred years now. That’s what Miss Tyler told me. Two hundred eighty-five by my count.
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.
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.
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.
Caesar, I gave you everything. Even when I didn’t have to give you. I made every way for you. I turned my eyes away. I figured if I didn’t see it I couldn’t hold fault. If I held fault I couldn’t hold on to my love for you. But now you standing in the light and I can’t turn away no more. I remember you when you was on the other side of the law. That’s my brother. The one who used to get out of bed to take me to school. The one who believed everybody had the same right to life…the same right to whatever there was in life they could find useful. That’s my brother. I don’t know who you are. But you not my brother. You hear me, Caesar? You not my brother.
