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Chapter Summary: The Middle Passage By Charles Johnson

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Outline
Johnson, Charles. Middle Passage. Scribner, 1990
Summary
The story “the Middle Passage” by Charles Johnson set in 1830 is a narrative of a period described by transportation of human African shipment across space and time to America. The novel gives details of the commencement of colonial government, and traversing the globe to Africa and back to America. Johnson 's novel is centered on the passage 's narrator Rutherford Calhoun who is confined temporarily to a space "in-between" the Allmuseri (highly prized slaves) and the ship 's crew, in-between the divisions of the ship 's crew and finally in-between generations of African Americans. Rutherford, a southern Illinoisan Negro freedman, leaves New Orleans on The Republic, African-bound ship, to escape from cutthroat creditors and his girlfriend. The ship bound for Senegambia conducts …show more content…

The slaves in the adventure are examples of implied identify transformation. The author refers to the Allmuseri as the symbol of original African identity. Slavery in the ship drives them into panic because they have no idea where their destination would be. The punishment they received from the Falcon led them into multiplicity of madness. The bad experiences transforms their souls just like Falcon had mathematically tight-packed their flesh. Transformation is evident where the slaves do not consider their selves African and yet not Americans. They rebel Falcon’s philosophies and take over the Republic. Johnson furthers the transformation theme by narrating how the rebellious slaves forced Captain Falcon and his crew in the Republic to adopt their culture to prove their subservience. Therefore to some extent the African slave retain their identity while their American enslavers lose their cultural identity. According to Falcon the situation where the African-Americans are torn between two identities is referred to as dualism that he say is a “bloody mind

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