This was our book club’s fourth read and its first fiction book. Our group being used to critique and debate non-fiction books, we were curious to see how we would do outside of our comfort zone, unpacking and analyzing a novel. Washington Black turned out to be an interesting yet challenging novel to critique given its length and various parts, which are somewhat unequal and could actually be analyzed as separate novels. Half of the group appreciated the author’s effort and skill in adapting the first-person writing as the protagonist grows up and discovers the world around him. From a slave child interpreting his surroundings with fear, naivete and relatively few words to make sense of a complex world, the inner voice that accompanies us throughout the read gradually becomes more mature, reflexive and elaborate in its analysis. Some members of our book club felt that the transition occurred too rapidly however, and were not entirely convinced with the narrative around the boy’s ability to evolve into a borderline-genius scientist with no education or training and limited mentorship.
Our group though agreed that the writing is superb all throughout the book. In particular, one cannot help but be amazed with the author’s capacity to describe the boy’s emotions. The smooth writing and precisely-crafted descriptions take the reader into the boy's mind and how he processes information that is new and disturbing, as well as how he copes with those situations of injustice he is faced with. The writing’s other dimension worth noting is the great poetry the author brings to circumstances whose sheer violence would a priori leave no space for beauty at all. Through metaphors that are often related to nature’s contrasting peaceful atmosphere, the author manages to relieve the reader, though momentarily, of the boy’s internal and external darkness.
A final element worth highlighting is how rich and diversified the story is in terms of the relationships it depicts: this involves the classical (though in this case, not typical) relations between lovers and friends; but the author also engages quite substantially with issues inherent to mentor-mentee, father-daughter, as well as disturbing to read master-subject dynamics. On this, one central theme and argument becomes a red thread across the story, which the protagonist often struggles with: the assumptions we make about what others feel or think based on their behavior are usually wrong and often lead to misunderstanding, conflict and sadness. This is because those context-specific assumptions fail to take into account the bigger picture of someone’s history and life circumstances. Indeed, « Wash » finds this out the hard way at several points during his journey.
Overall, Washington Black is an exciting, poetic and psychologically-rich account of slavery through the eyes of a slave boy and his journey fighting deterministic forces imposed by his condition. Though not an original story per se, the novel is innovative in its writing, structure and character development, as well as because it examines slavery and emancipation in the context of a Caribbean plantation, as opposed to the more documented mainland US.
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