Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Never Caught, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Slavery and Paternalism
Narrative and Historical Erasure
The Creation of America
Freedom and Agency
Summary
Analysis
In the summer of 1790, the Washingtons return to Mount Vernon for a long, nearly three-month visit. The nation’s capital is being moved from New York to Philadelphia, and most of the Cherry Street house’s contents are packed up and shipped there. Though Ona is only 16, she has experienced more of the world than anyone else in her family—including her sister back at Mount Vernon, Betty Davis, who has recently given birth to a daughter named Nancy. Dunbar writes that the return to Mount Vernon must have made Ona consider the “fixed reality” of a life lived in enslavement—though her family members may have seen her special duties and valued work as glamorous, Ona now knew that up north, Black people enjoyed true freedom.
Dunbar uses this passage to unpack how profoundly Ona’s time away must have changed her. Ona, like her family members, may have previously viewed her role in the Washingtons’ lives as glamorous, special, or otherwise proximal to certain luxuries. Now, however, having seen what true freedom looks like, she is forced to reckon with the fact that no matter how envied her duties, her life is a “fixed reality”—it’s still not her own.
Themes
Martha Washington is once again anxious and on edge as she prepares for yet another move to the new capital. Where the nation’s epicenter should be is a point of great debate. Congress has decided to build a Federal City which exists independently from any other city or state government—and Washington has pressured his fellow statesmen to locate this city in a Southern location. The capital, then, is temporarily moving to Philadelphia while the federal government begins forcing hundreds of slaves to clear the land over the desolate swamps of Eastern Virginia and begin building the resplendent infrastructure which will house “the seat of America’s power.”
This passage exemplifies how marginalized the very people who built America—enslaved Black men and women—were, as they were forbidden from enjoying the freedoms America promised to its privileged white citizens. Enslaved Black people were forced to do the backbreaking labor of clearing swampland and building infrastructure to create “the seat of America’s power,” yet that power did not extend them equal rights. In showing how Black Americans have always been excluded from the very places, social structures, and institutions they themselves built, Dunbar highlights the flawed creation of America.
Themes
As the Washingtons prepare to return north, they choose to bring more rather than fewer slaves along with them, even though they have realized that Northern sentiments about slavery are shifting. Martha chooses to bring along Ona, and Washington assigns a slave named Hercules who possesses great culinary skills to work in the kitchen at the grand new house in Philadelphia. Hercules’s son Richmond is also allowed to come along. William Lee, however, is left behind amidst worsening physical disabilities. Altogether, eight slaves will move to Philadelphia with the Washingtons. Though the move is full of uncertainty for all of them, not a single one of the Washingtons’ slaves is able to express the fears and hopes they most certainly feel.
Dunbar briefly highlights the names and stories of many of the slaves who accompany the Washingtons to Philadelphia in order to show how their humanity, agency, and feelings are collectively denied time and time again. In a time of rapid change for everyone, the Black men and women who keep the Washingtons’ affairs running smoothly are not given a chance to catch their breath, gather their feelings, express their anxieties, or feel their experiences validated.
Themes
At the large, imposing Executive Mansion on High Street, Washington builds additional accommodations for his “entourage” of slaves—as well as for Tobias Lear, Lear’s wife Mary, their son Benjamin, and the Lear’s 20-odd slaves and servants who will also live at High Street. For the slaves and servants who will live in the sprawling yet full President’s House, privacy and autonomy will be impossible to come by.
Dunbar shows how quickly the Executive Mansion fills up in order to highlight the great melting pot of people and experiences who will populate it. This will likely inform Ona’s experience of life up north, exposing her to perspectives, opportunities, and hopes that she’s never conceived of before.
Themes
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Ona and Moll are assigned to sleep in the room with the Washingtons’ grandchildren. The children are primarily Moll’s job, but Ona, too, will be responsible for soothing the youngsters in the middle of the night. Dunbar writes that when it comes to sleeping arrangements, living and resting in the same quarters as their owners was never preferable for slaves—especially female slaves—who were, while in their masters’ houses, more vulnerable to sexual attacks. Ona is on “constant jeopardy”—yet as long as she sleeps with the children, she is comparatively safer, shielded by their young bodies.
Dunbar provides historical context surrounding the perils facing enslaved Black women who lived and slept in close quarters with their white owners and their white owners’ relatives. She does so in order to approximate how Ona must have felt as she moved to a new place. Her anxiety about the “constant” threat of rape would likely have been tempered by the fact that she shared a room with children—yet Dunbar suggests that no enslaved Black woman could ever feel completely free from fears of violence.
Themes
As George Washington packs his mansion with Black slaves and white servants alike, he does not realize that putting the two groups in such close proximity to one another will jeopardize his fortune. By watching their “comrades” receive pay for their work, move about town freely, and make decisions for themselves, the enslaved Black men and women in Washington’s home will become even more aware of the injustices that define their own existences.
Dunbar foreshadows how the profound shifts and unlikely encounters taking place at the Executive Mansion will reverberate throughout the lives not just of the enslaved Black men and women who begin to imagine different futures for themselves, but throughout the lives of the Washingtons as well.
Themes
