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The Water Dancer Sparknotes

1622 Words7 Pages

Bradley Reiff
Ms. Faith,
English III Honors
28 April 2023
The Scars of Constrainment Beneath the industrial, economical and political success of the 1800's United States, existed a society based on slavery and forced labor. African or African American people were the most common to be enslaved, either born into slavery or sold from Africa. Author Ta-Nehisi Coates, portrays the life of an African American born into slavery only having his family to support him. However, Coates demonstrates how this family being stripped away from him, harshly affects the character behavior and psychology. Ta-Nehisi Coates, in The Water Dancer, uses the motifs of chains and the absence of family to convey how slavery isolates, restricts, and permanently …show more content…

After taking a lengthy ride on the train, Hiram eventually “stepped off the train, at that Clarksburg station, I could feel the shackles clamping down on my wrist, the vise tightening around my neck. Having lived as I had, having tasted my own freedom, having seen whole societies of colored but free, I felt it as a weight beyond anything I had ever known […] I wanted to take Sophia there, and thinking further, how much I wanted to take Thena there, and it occurred to me on that day that I was happy to have returned, for I never wanted to again breathe free air with those two in chains” (Coates 311). Hiram’s chains also symbolize self infliction. As a freed man, he could live a life of hope, yet after living this life of prosperity, he willingly returned to slavery. He felt the weight, the shackles returning, binding him to a stinging wound of restriction. He willingly loses this freedom as he values family over his own well being. He would never “again breathe free air with those two in chains” and he symbolically chains himself back into this system of oppression and imprisonment. He fears bondage and servility, but fears …show more content…

Mary Bronson, a liberated slave, exits free in the underground. However her children and husband remain in captivity. She begs for the underground to save them, but they refuse as they are low on resources and time. Out of anger, Bronson states “Then you ain’t got the power of freedom,’ she said. ‘If you can’t keep them from parting mother from my son, the husband from his natural wife, then you got nothing […] For days after each conduction I would still be working my way through the most stolen of moods. This no longer felt like freedom, not anymore” (Coates 204). Hiram realizes that an enslaved person is not truly free as long as they have been torn apart from family’s. This idea seeps into his well being and he realizes that he isn’t free till he reunites with his family. Therefore, he sees the underground as being unable to follow through with his freedom. However, he still works and toils away with them, despite feeling isolated and secluded. He can’t make any meaningful connections as his family and love are still enslaved. He wants to save them, but he is unable to do so, causing him to separate himself from others. Overall, Coates uses the motif of family to display Hiram’s feelings of isolation and seclusion without his family in his freed life. As a result, after working for

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Thanks to this, he was able to look at slaveholders’ papers and get a better understanding of what was going on and he started to realize that what was going on was wrong. This realization helped him be mentally free for a time and he even attempted to escape, but another slave ratted him out. He went to Covey, and after a while of being with there, they got into a fight that “rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within [him] a sense of [his] own manhood. It recalled the departed self-confidence, and inspired [him] again with a determination to be free’ (82-83). After the battle, he knows that he can still have a chance at freedom as long as he is not thoughtless and has the power of reason.

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