Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Washington Black, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Freedom vs. Captivity
Racism, Humanity, and Cruelty
Journeying and the Past
Family, Love, and Pain
Art, Science, and Curiosity
Summary
Analysis
George Washington “Wash” Black is 10 or 11 years old when his first master, Richard Black, dies. The master is very old, and no one on the plantation grieves him. Wash watches in the heat, alongside Big Kit, as the overseers carry the coffin away from Great House and Faith Plantation. Wash presses the palm of his hand against Big Kit’s calf, comforted by her strength and power, as the men slide the coffin into the wagon and ride away. He thinks that he and Big Kit are watching “the dead go free.”
The opening scene of Washington Black sets up the book’s first key conflict: people battling slavery and captivity. Wash and Big Kit are both enslaved on Faith Plantation, and they feel their physical restriction keenly—so much so that Wash is even aware that his former master has more freedom as a dead man than Wash has as a living one.
Themes
The master’s nephew, Erasmus Wilde, arrives 18 weeks later. Wash watches with Big Kit—they are inseparable when he is a child—as Erasmus emerges from his wagon. Immediately, Wash knows that this is the new master: his eyes are terrifying and sinister, and Wash can tell he is a man who takes pleasure in controlling slaves’ lives and deaths. When the man emerges, Wash can feel Big Kit shudder. Wash realizes in hindsight that this is when Big Kit determined to kill herself—and to kill Wash, too.
This passage establishes how Big Kit is like a mother figure to Wash—she is fiercely protective of him when he is a child, but Wash’s narration from the future suggests that she also has the capacity to cause him great harm. Additionally, as Wash and Kit observe that Erasmus is cruel, Big Kit recognizes for herself that death might provide her and Wash with greater freedom and mercy than the inhumane treatment she knows Erasmus is soon to exact upon them.
Themes
