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
Wash realizes that he has to find Titch, to know if he lives and to confront him. He realizes that he still doesn’t fully feel on solid ground. He writes a letter to Titch at Granbourne and surprisingly, Titch’s mother writes back. When he tells the Goffs that he plans to go, Tanna wonders irately why he’s seeking Titch out. Wash isn’t fully sure, but he thinks that he likely just wants an apology or an explanation, or the reason why Titch chose him in the first place.
Here, Wash becomes more invested in trying to see Titch again. While he acknowledges that he doesn’t fully understand his desire to see Titch again, he is plagued by wanting some resolution, underscoring how Wash is unable to put the past behind him.
Themes
Tanna and Wash argue, but ultimately Wash still decides to go. Tanna tells him the days he should work around, because they have appointments to plan their exhibition. Tanna also suggests that she could go with him to Granbourne. Wash is admittedly anxious about going alone, but he doesn’t want her criticism as he goes, saying that the trip is foolish. She assures him she’ll bite her tongue.
Wash recognizes that he wants Tanna’s help and company, but he is also hurt by her criticism—demonstrating again that loved ones can cause a lot of emotional distress because they are supposed to be the most supportive, and so taking away that support can be especially painful.
Themes
The next week, Wash and Tanna set out for Granbourne together. As their carriage approaches the estate, they see rotted buildings and rickety shacks. Wash realizes that Grandbourne is like the center of a wheel, and Faith was one spoke to help power this estate. As Wash approaches, he wonders if he’ll actually find Titch there—it has a sense of vacancy, of an estate fading away.
As Wash and Tanna observe the crumbling Granbourne estate for the first time, Wash’s thoughts about the place highlight slavery’s cruelty and inhumanity. All of the enslaved people’s labor—their lives and deaths—were in service of keeping up this scattered family and their disintegrating household.
Themes
When Tanna and Wash arrive at the old house, it is forbidding, grand, and crumbling. An old manservant steps out onto the landing and brings them into the reception hall, which is unlit, and then through darkened corridors. He leads them out to a back terrace, which feels warmer than inside the house. Then, Mrs. Wilde appears—very tall and in a damp riding dress. Her face is waxen and her spine is slightly curved.
The house represents Mrs. Wilde’s despair. Even though she is still a proud English woman, she has now lost her husband and at least one of her sons. As such, the house takes on this sense of loss, so much so that it has trapped a coldness within it. For Mrs. Wilde, like so many other characters, she has devoted herself to loving a family that has caused her a great deal of loss and pain.
Themes
Get the entire Washington Black LitChart as a printable PDF.
Mrs. Wilde welcomes Wash formally, and Wash bows to her. She then crosses to sit on a bench, and Wash and Tanna follow. Mrs. Wilde says that she hopes they ate before coming, because she didn’t know if they enjoyed English food. Tanna explains that she is English—her father, Geoffrey Goff, is a zoologist. Mrs. Wilde says that Mr. Wilde was interested in science, but she didn’t care for it at all.
Mrs. Wilde shows her own bias in not offering Tanna and Wash any kind of lunch. This is one example of how society uses Tanna and Wash’s race to justify lesser treatment. She does not offer common courtesy because they are not “English”—by which she means they are not white.
Themes
Tanna asks if Titch is at the house, but Mrs. Wilde says that she hasn’t seen her son in three years. Wash realizes that this means Titch did survive, if she saw him three years ago. Tanna asks where Titch went, but Mrs. Wilde doesn’t answer. She instead tells Wash that they sold the plantation. When Wash asks what happened to the slaves, she says many of them worked as apprentices and some left to work elsewhere.
Not only is Wash trying to understand his past by confronting Titch, but he also expresses a desire to find some resolution regarding his enslavement, implying that he is also trying to find some resolution for his guilt over abandoning Big Kit. This illustrates how Wash’s complicated relationship with found family like Titch and Big Kit is a part of the reason that Wash is trying to confront his past, because despite his journeys away from them, they are still an inescapable part of who he has become.
Themes
Mrs. Wilde then asks Wash if he was with Mr. Wilde when he died, and Wash says yes. Wash realizes that she wants to know about his life there and about Peter House—that she had questions that unsettled her. Tanna again presses about Titch, and Mrs. Wilde says that he might be at Grosvenor, at his cousin Philip’s house. Wash also realizes then that she knows about Phillip’s death and Wash’s possible hand in it. She asks if they mean to stay long in London and hopes that he can see the zoo in Regent’s park. She says he should feel quite at home—in London, that is.
Mrs. Wilde has also experienced a great deal of pain at the hands of the people she loves most—particularly her husband, who spent decades away from her in the Arctic and whom, it is implied, she believes may have had a romantic relationship with Peter. Additionally, Mrs. Wilde’s final comment is a sly insult to Wash, as she implies at first that Wash would feel at home with the zoo animals, again dehumanizing him.
Themes
Later, as Tanna and Wash leave, the manservant tells Wash that Titch visited two years earlier and left quite upset. He meant to sail out of Liverpool on behalf of the Anti-Slavery Society—he also left his reports on the plantation with the Society. The man suggests that they inquire with the organization for his whereabouts, explaining where their offices are. Tanna and Wash thank him profusely.
The manservant provides the next link in Wash’s attempt to find Titch. But all of this traveling illustrates how much time and energy Wash is now wasting in trying to confront his past, rather than simply attempting to move on and live his life. This demonstrates again how the past is becoming inescapable for Wash.
Themes
