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
Ona has never been on a freighter such as the Nancy, and her journey to New Hampshire is likely jarring, nauseating, and arduous. The journey lasts about five days—Dunbar writes that intense anxiety about being caught, or met by emissaries of the Washingtons in Portsmouth, likely dictated Ona’s emotional state throughout the trip. Ona dresses plainly, packing away her fine clothes; she is determined to blend in and pass for a free Black Northern woman. Ona has been connected, most likely, with a person or small network of people who will care for her in New Hampshire—but even with a group of supportive allies and friends, Ona knows that it’s only a matter of time before her owners send slave catchers to find her and return her to bondage.
Dunbar uses imagination to reconstruct Ona’s journey northward to New Hampshire. She knows that Ona could not possibly yet have been able to enjoy her freedom—too much is still at stake, and there are still too many things that could swiftly go wrong. This is a time of high anxiety for Ona—and as she packs away her fine clothes, Dunbar uses the symbol of clothing to externalize Ona’s desire to not yet rest on her laurels. Ona has escaped—but true freedom is still a long way off.
Themes
There are, Dunbar writes, fewer free Black people in Portsmouth in 1796 than there are slaves at Mount Vernon. Ona is housed by an unknown member of this small community. She begins looking for work. She is an accomplished seamstress—but she cannot show off the beautiful clothes she has made during her years working for the Washingtons for fear of exposing where she’s come from. As a result, Ona is forced into domestic labor—she must take on arduous new tasks she was never assigned while in the Washingtons’ service. Carrying heavy loads of laundry, washing clothes in boiling-hot water, plucking chickens and slicing vegetables, stoking hot fires, and other wearisome tasks become part of Ona’s daily life.
Ona’s decision to accept the realities of a small community, unstable housing, and back-breaking labor day in and day out illustrates just how dearly she values her freedom. Things are objectively harder for Ona in Portsmouth—and added to her grueling labor is the constant threat of being found and recaptured—yet even this life is preferable to a life of enslavement.
Themes
Though New Hampshire has a long history of using slave labor as an integral part of its economy, by the time Ona arrives, the state is on its way to ending slavery. The process of emancipation is slow and gradual—but by 1805, Dunbar writes, the practice of holding humans in bondage will have disappeared from Portsmouth (though New Hampshire will not formally, legally abolish slavery until 1857). The atmosphere in Portsmouth when Ona arrives is cautious and skeptical yet hopeful—and with the help of her new community, she quickly adjusts to life in a new place governed by new rules.
Dunbar uses historical context to reconstruct what Ona’s early days in New Hampshire must have been like. Ona likely would have been nervous, cautious, and fearful of being apprehended—yet the changing social mores of the state and anti-slavery sentiments must have bolstered Ona’s sense of having done the right thing and arrived, at last, in the right place.
Themes
