51 pages • 1 hour read
Jesmyn WardMen We Reaped
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2013A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Hurricane Katrina
Ward repeatedly refers to Hurricane Katrina even though the hurricane’s devastation does not feature into the events of her memoir. Ward instead uses Hurricane Katrina as a frame of reference to demonstrate the continued patterns of neglect experienced by the Black community during times of natural disaster; it also symbolizes the uncontrollable nature of life. Ward first references Hurricane Katrina when relaying the experience of her father’s family after Hurricane Camille in 1969. Ward criticizes the lack of support provided for displaced families who are only offered relocation rather than the ability to rebuild. As her memoir was published in 2013, Ward’s use of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina offers readers a relevant and timely example through which they can understand Hurricane Camille’s impact on Ward’s family.
At the end of her memoir, Ward compares life to a hurricane after which “we board up to save what we can and bow low to the earth to crouch in that small space above the dirt where the wind will not reach” (250). Much of Ward’s memoir discusses the greater social and historical forces that limit and control the lives of Black men and women struggling to forge new identities. Ward’s use of the hurricane image relates to her previous allusion to Hurricane Katrina, which helps readers better visualize the devastation and lack of control Ward documents in her memoir.
Ghosts
Ghosts populate Ward’s memoir as she navigates memories of her deceased loved ones in her quest to understand their deaths. Ward is haunted by these memories, as evidenced by the raw emotions she conveys as she relives their tragic endings. Ward also includes a ghost in her Prologue when she recounts a visit to her father’s home in New Orleans:
Joshua insisted that there was a ghost in the house, and at night we’d lie on our backs in the TV-less living room, watch the barred shadows slink across the walls, and wait for something to change, for something that wasn’t supposed to be there, to move (1).
Ward creates a paranoid atmosphere, one that provides a glimpse into her anxiety as she anticipates the inevitable reality of death.
Ward heightens this anxiety through the symbols of the wolf and the cellar, both of which she refers to as specters that haunt her throughout her adult life. Ward’s classification of the wolf as a specter demonstrates how Ward believes the past continues to haunt her community, which struggles to escape. Like the past, the image of the cellar plagues Ward into adulthood, and her depression intensifies amid her overwhelming grief. Ward’s choice to link the past and depression to spectral images illustrates the enduring, uncontainable forces that affect her.
Scars
Ward enters the world with physical scars that foreshadow the deep emotional scars she gathers during her lifetime. Ward uses these visible scars as representations of the emotional trauma she experiences. The scars from her difficult birth represent her never-ending struggle for survival. The long, faded scar from the pit bull attack mark the role violence plays throughout her life. Ward compares these scars to “war wounds,” thus aligning herself with soldiers who have experienced the physical and emotional trauma of battle and survived. For Ward, her battle is one for survival in a world that devalues her worth as a Black woman.
Related Titles
By Jesmyn Ward
