39 pages • 1 hour read
Toni MorrisonA Mercy
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2008A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Abandonment as Connection
As mentioned previously, A Mercy is rife with themes of abandonment and fragmentation. Despite this, loss and loneliness are not the only relevant themes in the text. Many of the characters experience abandonment, and are orphans due to circumstances beyond or entirely outside of their control. This fragmentation of their family life leads these characters to develop bonds of kinship in other areas of their life. They therefore find connection within the spheres of their abandonment. These connections forged from the flames of trauma and loneliness are yet another way that the characters adapt and survive. Abandonment as connection is a vital theme throughout the novel; it makes the human need for family and bonding a vital plot point and also displays the emotional cruelty and depravity at the heart of the institution of slavery.
Though the theme appears throughout the novel, it is most evident among the group of characters on the Vaark farm. Morrison writes, “As long as Sir was alive it was easy to veil the truth: that they were not a family—not even a like-minded group. They were orphans, each and all” (59). Though the rag-tag group are forced together through a variety of factors, it is important to keep in mind that these connections that are made under duress never replace the need for actual kinship and unity. The collection of “orphans” shows how various groups and peoples are dispossessed by the law and society, as is the case with those enslaved. The tentative connections that they build for themselves, though necessary for their previous survival on the farm, begin to crumble when Jacob Vaark dies, and characters gradually begin to change.
When Florens returns, having been abandoned by the Blacksmith, the end is near for the Vaark family farm. Things have irrefutably changed, and the characters’ fates as separate and alone beings seem entirely cemented. Even Willard and Scully discuss how the group has begun to fall apart. Morrison writes of this inevitable fragmentation:
They once thought they were a kind of family because together they had carved companionship out of isolation. But the family they imagined they had become was false. Whatever each one loved, sought or escaped, their futures were separate and anyone’s guess (156).
Though this description of their assembled family is a bleak one, it is true, nonetheless. The assembled group on the Vaark farm did not have a hand in choosing the others in their “family.” They are gathered by Jacob Vaark and his will alone, bound together by their abandonment and Jacob’s declaration of ‘mine.’ Morrison writes, “Mother hunger—to be one or have one—both of them were reeling from that longing which, Lina knew, remained alive, traveling the bone” (63). The thing binding these characters together is this “mother hunger,” this desperate longing that is a remnant of enslavement, a human and emotional aftermath of the institution of slavery that rarely gets displayed in literature.
Love as Possession
Similar to finding connection in abandonment, there is yet another paradoxical theme that traverses the length of the novel. Due to the many orphaned characters, the novel contends with the repercussions of abandonment and the fragmentation of families. The love that these orphans once felt for their families has morphed almost entirely into something darker and more possessive. In a novel about enslavement, the discussion of ownership and possession over another human being is already an innate part of the story at hand. Love as a form of possession, then, is an added layer of analysis about capitalism and the institution of slavery, and the subsequent effects on the human body and psyche.
The possessiveness that underscores these orphans appears most evident in Florens’s negotiation of her relationship with the Blacksmith. Florens is still scarred from her experience as a child, when her mother gives her up to the Vaarks for a trade. Though the act in itself is a kindness, Florens can only understand it as her mother choosing her younger brother over her. When the Blacksmith accepts the young orphan Malaik into his home, then, this turns Florens’s relationship with them into a contentious and fraught one. Though Florens is a young adult, she is unable to understand why the Blacksmith wishes to help Malaik. Instead of identifying with the Blacksmith and understanding why he might want to help the child, Florens sees Malaik as a threat to her future. Morrison writes, “What Malaik, what. He is silent but the hate in his eyes is loud. He wants my leaving. This cannot happen. I feel the clutch inside. This expel can never happen again” (137). Florens is determined not to be abandoned again. She loves the Blacksmith to the point of possession. Florens is unwilling and unable to share the Blacksmith with anyone else, even an orphaned child.
Florens realizes that she has already been expelled when the Blacksmith returns and witnesses her hurting Malaik. The truth of the situation crashes down around Florens; the Blacksmith’s care for Malaik is a direct betrayal to Florens. Morrison writes, “I don’t hear your horse only your shout and know I am lost because your shout is not my name. Not me. Him. Malaik you shout. Malaik” (140). The Blacksmith shouts Malaik’s name when he enters the home, horrified by the scene before him. This declaration of Malaik’s name, though a seemingly small and simple action, is what pushes Florens over the edge. In choosing to shout Malaik’s name before Florens’s, the young woman believes that the Blacksmith has made his choice between them.
The Blacksmith says to Florens, “Your head is empty and your body is wild […] Own yourself, woman, and leave us be […] You are nothing but wilderness. No constraint. No mind” (141). The theme of love as possession is most evident in the above quotation. The Blacksmith’s response to Florens’s declaration that she belongs to him is for her to “own yourself, woman” (141). In declaring this, the Blacksmith makes Florens out to be lesser, to be more animal than human, “nothing but wilderness” (141). The Blacksmith fails to recognize, however, how Florens’s history and enslavement might have impacted her. The psychological impact of enslavement is insidious, creating a possessive impulse in Florens and other orphaned characters to own the very same people that they claim to love.
Race and Racism
Some have argued that this novel takes place in a time period that is pre-racial, where current ideas and stereotypes about race have yet to be solidified or stabilized due to constant discovery and colonization. The geopolitical boundaries are still in flux during this time period. Thus, any generalized concept of race has also yet to be fully conceived. In writing about slavery during this particular moment in time, Morrison manages to encapsulate a fascinating transition, wherein the world is beginning to move towards a racial and racist designation. The ignorance around race and the beginnings of a present-day racism that continues to function in many Western societies today is encapsulated within the book. Despite the fact that Morrison is writing in a time period far from what modern readers know and recognize, similar attitudes of ignorance and fear towards people of color, and especially Black people, are painfully recognizable in the world and in politics today. Race and racism are thus themes that continuously run through the novel, despite the conspicuous absence of a socialized standard of racialization or racism.
The scenes that take place in Widow and Jane Ealing’s town are examples of the repeated theme of race. Set on a backdrop of a town that is currently in the thralls of its very own witch hunt, Florens’s skin color immediately marks her as a target for the individuals responsible for the phenomenon. Morrison writes, “One woman speaks saying I have never seen any human this black. I have says another, this one is as black as others I have seen. She is Afric. Afric and much more, says another” (111). There is an othering at play here that the individuals are responsible for. By rendering Florens as an “other,” as an outsider, the fear of the unknown easily takes hold. A combination of xenophobia, ignorance, and racism is at play in this scene. One individual knows that African people exist, going so far as to say, “She is Afric” (111).
However, there is immediately a dissent, an urge to make Florens the scapegoat for whatever perceived supernatural event that is occurring in the town. If Florens is “much more” than Afric, then she is also much more dangerous, and much less human in their eyes. In this case, the animal fear of the unknown overrides any kind of logic, another trope that is familiar in A Mercy. In the end, the people of the town base their ignorant, racist declarations about Florens on a small girl’s fears. They declare, “The Black Man is among us. This is his minion” (111). By connecting the color of Florens’s skin to their own superstitions and colorism, the beginnings of modern racism are born.
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