Washington Black

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018

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Part 1, Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1: “Faith Plantation, Barbados, 1830”

Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary

The novel begins on Faith Plantation, a sugar cane plantation on the island of Barbados in 1830. The protagonist, Wash, is 10 or 11 years old when his first master dies. Along with Wash’s friend and surrogate mother Big Kit, Wash watches the coffin containing the old master leave the plantation and wonders what is to come.

Instead of selling Faith Plantation, the former master’s nephew inherits it and travels to the plantation to oversee its operations. The new master, Erasmus, disembarks from his carriage for the first time, and his cruel countenance frightens Wash. Having grown up a slave on a plantation, Wash is already wise to the ways of the world and knows “the nature of evil,” particularly when it comes to white masters (5). Narrating the events of the chapter from a later date, Wash believes that it was this moment that Big Kit “determined, calmly and with love, to kill herself and me” (5).

Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary

Wash describes his upbringing and relationship with Big Kit. At five years old, he was sent to live with Big Kit and other slaves in a “brutal hut” in the slave quarters of the plantation (6). When other slaves begin to bully him, Big Kit protects Wash from the others in the hut, gives him food, and tells him he will have a “great big life” (6). Everyone fears and respects Big Kit because of her size and because she is a witch. Big Kit is from an African kingdom called Dahomey, and she tells Wash that her true name is Nawi.

In the present, Erasmus dismisses the old overseers of the plantation, and he hires new ones who are rough and cruel for no reason. The new overseers maim men and deal out horrific abuse, forcing slaves to eat from chamber pots, whipping them, burning them alive, and other terrible punishments.

Big Kit has determined to kill both herself and Wash and sees death as “a door” that will carry both her and Wash to freedom. She believes that, after committing suicide, “the dead were reborn, whole, back into their homelands, to walk free again” (8). While Wash isn’t sure that Dahomey is really his homeland, as he was born on Barbados, Big Kit assures him that she will take him with her.

Big Kit delays committing suicide, even as Erasmus grows more brutal, waiting for the right circumstances. Other suicides begin, both by those who believe they’ll wake up in their homelands and those influenced by them. To curb the rash of suicides, Erasmus appears before the assembled slaves. Erasmus dumps the body of William, a slave who committed suicide, in front of them and cuts off William’s head. Erasmus tells the slaves that they can’t be reborn without a head, and Big Kit shows despair for the first time.

Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary

Narrating the story from several years after the events at Faith Plantation take place, Wash informs the reader that he is now 18 years old and a free man. He states that he was born in 1818 either in Barbados or on a ship crossing the Atlantic. Wash began “wielding a hoe” on the plantation when he was only two years old, and he was given “a straw hat and a shovel I could barely lift” to use in the fields when he was nine (12). His master named him George Washington Black and jokingly said the name glimpsed “the birth of a nation and a warrior-president and a land of sweetness and freedom” in the boy (13). Among the other slaves, he is known as Wash. Wash indicates that, while his story begins on Faith Plantation, his travels have taken him far from Barbados, and he has learned and suffered much.

Part 1, Chapters 1-3 Analysis

The narrator sets the scene of his childhood and early life, painting a brutal picture of slave life on a sugar plantation in the West Indies. Using surprising and evocative language, Wash reflects the awful brutality of white owners and overseers and the fundamentally twisted and terrible relationship between slaves and masters. The situation is so bad on Faith Plantation that suicide is a viable alternative for many people. Despite this, Wash also recalls moments of tenderness between himself and his surrogate mother. Even amidst the horrors of slavery, these early, formative relationships have a lasting impact on his life and character.

Narrating from several years after the events on the plantation take place, Wash provides a glimpse of his future life, leaving us wondering how he escapes enslavement and gains his freedom. While the story does not shirk from the realities of slavery, it gives us hope that Wash might be able to break free from his terrible circumstances.