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
At the Abolitionist Society, Tanna has already made arrangements to view Titch’s papers. She also asks the woman at the desk where Titch might have sailed out of Liverpool, but the woman knows nothing about his trip. Tanna and Wash step into a small reading room with the crate of Titch’s papers. Wash looks at clippings—advertisements for lost slaves, including the one for himself. He shivers, seeing it again and knowing how it all ended.
Tanna reserves the papers from Faith Plantation because she recognizes how much energy Wash is exerting in trying to find Titch. She understands that he will never stop seeking it out unless he gets some kind of closure surrounding his childhood, illustrating her own understanding that the past is unavoidable.
Themes
There is a log of apprentices who were still working on the plantation after Emancipation, along with a list of names and deaths. On this log, he sees Big Kit’s name, her death date inscribed. He knew deep down she would be dead, but to see her listed like an object is agonizing; he knows how unceremoniously she would have been treated in death. He wants to smash something, and he hates Tanna in that moment for trying to give him back his past.
In discovering Big Kit’s death, Wash is forced to confront the fact that he caused her a great deal of pain in abandoning her, even though she was the closest thing he had to family. In addition, Wash understands the injustice of her situation—how she wouldn’t have gotten any kind of ceremony or respect in death because the white masters on the plantation didn’t view the enslaved people as fully human.
Themes
Wash opens a second log, this time with records of births by Wash’s first master, Richard Black. He catches sight of his own name under Big Kit’s—Big Kit was his mother. Wash is stunned. He recalls how she cared for him and cursed him and cracked his ribs and held him close. She damned his father as cruel and his mother as foolish, then hit him when he said she could know nothing about his parents. She told him he was stupid and that he was brilliant. She loved him despite knowing that one day they would likely be separated.
Even more than learning about Big Kit’s death, realizing that Big Kit was actually his biological mother causes Wash immense pain. Wash realizes in this moment that she treated him as her own son, but she also kept him at a distance because she knew that one day he would break her heart when they separated. Though Wash felt her love growing up, he also feels completely betrayed. In recognizing the full context of their relationship, Wash underscores how both he and Kit gave each other great love, but they ways they were absent from each other also caused deep pain.
Themes
In his mind, Wash sees Big Kit on a boat from Africa, on a long walk to the coast. He knows that she was raped and beaten—how she starved on the ships in the midst of urine, feces, vomit, and people committing suicide. He sees how she lived at Faith. And he sees how he left her behind in the cane fields and the sun so he could run off with Titch, so he would gradually forget her face. He feels Tanna’s hand on his shoulder, and he realizes he is crying.
Wash recognizes how he broke Big Kit’s heart in running off with Titch, essentially replacing her with Titch as his mentor and parent. While Big Kit certainly had times when she caused him both deep love and deep pain, Wash realizes that her love for him likely ended up causing her deep pain as well after he ran away.
Themes
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