60 pages • 2 hours read
Jesmyn WardLet Us Descend
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Mama’s Bladed Hands”
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains depictions of enslavement and references to sexual assault and violence.
Under cover of night, Annis and her Mama (Sasha) steal away from their cabin so that Mama can begin to teach Annis how to fight with a spear. Deep in the Carolina woods where the two live with the family of the white enslaver who fathered Annis, Mama tells the young girl that her grandmother had been a warrior, one of the many wives of a “Fon king.” Although such women were important because of their royal status, they were warriors first and wives second. Annis, who is still a young girl, finds these lessons difficult, but she is soon caught up in the rhythm of her weapon and is able to move fluidly with the spear. They return in the early hours of the morning to the cabin, which they share with Nan and her children: other enslaved members of their household.
In the morning, Mama and Annis rise early and hurry to the house of Annis’s “sire” to begin their day’s work. Annis notices the sire’s white daughters, her half sisters, still asleep in their beds. She feels resentment toward these girls but enjoys eavesdropping on the lessons they receive from a private tutor. Later in the day, she quietly listens by their schoolroom door to a lesson about Aristotle and beekeeping. Annis usually tries to make herself invisible in the house, but on this morning, her sire pays her more attention than usual. Having been told by her Mama the story of how he “violated” her in a series of sexual assaults that ultimately produced Annis, the young girl is watchful of his behavior. While she removes his boots, he suddenly lunges at her, but she quickly finishes her task and moves out of his reach.
Back in the clearing, Annis and Mama spar. Annis asks Mama about her grandmother, Mama Aza, and Mama shares more of Mama Aza’s story. Mama Aza’s father gave her to the Fon king when she was a young woman. She became one of hundreds of royal wives who divided their time between serving the king, fighting, and hunting. Such women were prohibited from having children, but Mama Aza found a lover in the palace and tried to run away with him. As punishment, the king sold her into slavery. Annis tells Mama about the sire’s unwanted attention, and Mama tells her that if he tries to accost her again, she is to run. Later, while putting fresh linens on her sire’s bed, Annis can feel his eyes on her once again. She begins to panic but hears her mother’s voice calling her from the hallway. Her mother’s eyes are fierce as she tells her daughter that it is time to go back to their cabin. After this quasi-confrontation between Mama and her sire, her sire sells Mama. Annis’s mother will be taken to the market for enslaved people in New Orleans. As Mama is being torn away from her daughter, she places a small object in Annis’s hair: a needle-sharp hair pin. This tiny weapon was whittled by Mama Aza from an elephant’s tusk. She tells Annis, “I always be with you” (22) and is gone.
Chapter 2 Summary: “Walking Ropeward”
After Mama is sold, Annis moves hurriedly through her chores. She cannot sleep. At night, she brings a blanket to the clearing where she and her mother once practiced hand-to-hand combat and listens to the drone of bees. Eventually, Safi, another enslaved woman on the property, comes to help Annis to wash and re-braid her hair. One night, Safi shows up at the cabin that Annis shares with Nan and her children and asks if she can stay with Annis. Although hesitant because the cabin is already loud and crowded, Annis agrees, and the young women share an emotionally charged kiss in bed. A few days later, Annis brings Safi to her clearing at night, and the two stand still and silent while the bees, which are typically only active during the day, hum with activity. Annis thinks that she sees a “white-shrouded” figure but knows that she and Safi are alone. As time passes, Annis continues to eavesdrop on her half sisters’ lessons, and one morning she hears the tutor reading about an Italian who wrote a long book about a descent into hell. She sees a parallel between the many levels of hell and her sire’s house and meditates on the Italian author’s words. His declaration, “Let us descend” (33) gains particular prominence in her mind and causes her to ruminate on life in this house. Later, her sire walks in on Annis and Safi kissing.
As punishment for this kiss, she and Safi are sold to the same “Georgia Man” who took her mother to New Orleans. Annis, too, will be tied to her fellow enslaved men and women and marched all the way from their Carolina home to the markets of enslaved people in Louisiana. On the road, travel is difficult. Safi in particular struggles, and Annis blames herself for their troubles. The enslaved people are given little to eat, and their pace is grueling. Safi is sexually assaulted by one of the men leading their march. When he returns her to the group of enslaved women, who are bound to one another with rope, he fails to tie her knots tightly enough, and she is able to loosen the rope and free herself. She asks Annis to come with her, but Annis declines. Safi sneaks away in the night, alone. After she leaves, Annis thinks that she hears someone call her true name, “Arese,” which her mother, Sasha, gave to her and which her sire then “flattened” into “Annis.” She thinks perhaps that this disembodied voice belongs to her mother, who must have come back to visit her as promised. But the voice is not her mother’s. Annis cannot identify it and does not fully understand what she has heard.
Chapter 3 Summary: “Line of Loss”
A new woman is placed in Safi’s spot next to Annis. She bears the scars of a heavy beating and “cowers” as if used to being the target of violence. She asks Annis how Safi managed to escape, and Annis is unsure how to respond. Annis recalls her mother’s lessons about Mama Aza and remembers that her grandmother was trained to run, to bear pain, and to persevere in difficult circumstances. She recalls learning about Mama Aza’s first elephant hunt and her time as one amongst a large number of warrior queens.
The injured woman ahead of Annis suddenly stumbles, and the rest of the women in the line pull their ropes taut in order to help her stand again. Annis once again sees the mysterious, white-clad female figure running in the woods. She knows that it is too tall to be Safi and once again hopes that it is her mother, escaped from her own forced march and hiding out amongst the trees.
It begins to rain, and conditions on the march deteriorate. Annis recalls the story of Mama Aza’s first elephant hunt: an expedition on which the warrior wives proved their worth as fighters and worked together to take down and kill a bull elephant. The female elephants, as the backbone of the herd, were left alive. It was on this hunt that Mama Aza stole the shard of ivory which she later whittled into a small weapon. This object is now nestled tightly in Annis’s hair. The rain is followed by days of searing sun. Annis and her fellow marchers are exhausted and hungry. At night, they are able to talk with one another. An elderly man tells Annis that he knew Safi’s mother. Annis asks if he knew her own mother, but he cannot recollect Sasha. Aza sees the white-clad spirit again, and this time the woman speaks to her. Annis realizes that it is not her mother. The woman tells Annis to call her Aza, and Annis wonders whether the figure is the spirit of her grandmother, Mama Aza.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
In this first section, Ward takes care to frame her protagonist’s story by depicting both the dehumanizing conditions of enslavement and the humanizing impact of love, “sweetness,” and the bonds that her characters form with one another despite their desperate circumstances. Ward also establishes the world of Annis and her mother and the warrior legacy that Annis’s mother passes on to her daughter. In this way, Ward begins to build the character of Annis and to showcase the protagonist’s sharp intellect, as well as the beauty of her relationship with Safi. Most importantly, the forced march introduces Annis’s trick of tapping into the agency of memory to strengthen herself with the knowledge of her proud heritage; this strength serves her well as she continues to find ways to exercise her will and demonstrate Resilience and Agency Amidst Oppression.
Significantly, the novel itself begins with combat, a fact that is meant to both introduce Annis’s strong familial legacy even as it emphasizes the prevalence of conflict and the need for defense within the dangerous world that both mother and daughter inhabit. The fighting skills of Annis’s West African warrior-wife grandmother, which were passed down first to Annis’s mother, Sasha, and now to Annis herself, stand as a proud tradition of strength that allows Annis to overcome the oppression of her situation. Annis’s cultural background also serves as a metaphor for her larger narrative arc, for she is a character who will have to fight for her physical safety, for her emotional stability, and ultimately, for her freedom. In this early portion of the narrative, Ward describes the vivid scene of Annis and her mother sparring with spears that Sasha and her own mother, Mama Aza, carved. These traditional weapons, along with the elephant-tusk awl that Sasha gives to Annis, become the text’s primary symbols of strength; this entire plotline thus speaks to the theme of Resilience and Agency Amidst Oppression. By teaching Annis how to fight, Sasha connects her daughter to her familial legacy and gives her a very real set of tools with which to protect herself. Such preparation is immediately proven to be vital for Annis’s survival, for Annis and her mother are cruelly separated, and Sasha’s enslaver sells her as a punishment for the moment of defiance she demonstrates when she tries to stop his predatory pursuit of her daughter. This series of events emphasizes the theme of Families Destroyed by Enslavement and traces the roots of the generational trauma within Annis’s family line.
In this section, Ward also outlines the details of Annis and Sasha’s life on the plantation, where they are enslaved by a man who is also Annis’s biological father. Annis’s mother is open with her daughter about the details of her parentage, and Annis understands from an early age that her “sire,” as she refers to the enslaver who fathered her, is a dangerous, violent man whose attentions must be avoided at all costs. This harsh reality establishes the theme of Sexual Assault as a Hazard of Enslavement, and when Annis’s “sire” shows interest in sexually assaulting Annis herself, Sasha shows her own sense of Resilience and Agency Amidst Oppression by intervening on her daughter’s behalf. Further emphasizing the deep inequalities that exist in society at this time, Annis’s sire is also the father of two white children, whose many financial and social advantages make Annis acutely aware that although these two affluent children of an enslaver are her half siblings, she herself will never be recognized as a daughter like they are. On the contrary, the obvious intent of Annis’s sire to subject her to sexual abuse is one of the narrative’s most overt condemnations of the brutality of enslavement, highlighting the danger that being enslaved posed to Black women.
Despite the deep danger that Annis must navigate in her everyday life, the author also makes it a point to demonstrate the protagonist’s keen intellect in these introductory chapters, for Annis frequently eavesdrops on her half siblings’ lessons in order to gain information that she would otherwise be forbidden to access. Whereas these white children are dull, easily distracted, and uninterested in learning, Annis’s attention is sharp, and she is laser-focused on gleaning as much information as possible. She is also able to understand the essence of complex, abstract lessons that elude the other girls’ full understanding. It is from her half siblings’ tutor that she indirectly learns about Aristotle and bees. In this moment, she easily comprehends the lessons that the tutor wishes to draw from the working habits of bees, and Annis’s understanding of their complex social organization has a profound influence on her subsequent understanding of larger issues surrounding identity, labor, and matriarchal bonds in general. Thus, for Annis, bees become a symbol of the complexity of identity, and when she analyzes bee colonies and their habits, she is able develop a stronger sense of self. It is from this tutor that she also learns about Dante’s Inferno, and this text becomes a deeply powerful metaphor that she will find useful in her forced march to New Orleans. As the traumatic events of her life unfold, she gains an intimate, first-hand knowledge of the kind of hell that Dante describes, and her interest in the Inferno’s gruesome imagery will become another way in which she uses history, literature, and science to understand and interpret her own life. She has a rich, inner complexity and sharpness of intellect that her enslavers entirely fail to appreciate, and this representation of her quiet intelligence is meant to emphasize just how dehumanizing enslavement was.
Annis and Safi’s relationship plays out entirely during this first set of chapters, and their love provides a counterbalance to the difficult conditions in which the two young women grow up on the plantation. The bond that they forge together intensifies into a romantic relationship that becomes a source of hope and strength for them both, and in this way, their connection speaks to the theme of Resilience and Agency Amidst Oppression. In a world in which enslaved women’s bodies are violable and they are frequently denied sexual agency, as Sasha was, Annis and Safi manage to exercise a stolen freedom to experience a sexuality that is borne of love and not of assault. Although their relationship is cut short by their sale and Safi’s subsequent escape, their bond is deep and meaningful. It also weaves another thread of connection between Annis and her past, for she recalls hearing from her mother, in stories of Mama Aza’s life as a warrior wife, that “some of the king’s wives loved each other, caressed each other” (31). Desire for a romantic relationship with another woman thus becomes a key part of her cultural inheritance, and by embracing a relationship with Safi, she participates in a politics of love that has its origins in West Africa, just like her family line.
This portion of the text portrays a series of traumatic events as Annis loses her mother and is eventually sold away from her plantation and separated from Safi, but during the long and grueling trek to New Orleans, Annis is nonetheless able to tap into the agency of memory in order to maintain her resolve. Throughout the forced march, she contemplates the life and adventures of Mama Aza, recalling the many stories that her mother shared with her about her warrior grandmother. From these memories and the knowledge that she is part of this warrior tradition, Annis draws new strength. She keeps her connection to her family and to her cultural heritage alive all on her own, and in so doing, she finds a well of inner strength from which she can draw. This dynamic also highlights the theme of Resilience and Agency Amidst Oppression, and Annis’s ability to retreat into the world of memory becomes a skill that she uses again and again throughout the course of the narrative.
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