Unnamed Enslaved Haitians

Display Name: 
Unnamed Enslaved Haitians
Sort Name: 
Unnamed Enslaved Haitians
Race: 
Black
Gender: 
Multi Gender Group
Class: 
Enslaved Black
Rank: 
Minor
Vitality: 
Alive
Biography: 

Historically, Haitian slavery was abolished and French ownership of land forbidden by law before Sutpen was born. The novel represents the people who rise up against the rule of the French sugar planter so symbolically that it is impossible to know if it sees them as enslaved or not. Before the rebellion they are depicted as the unseen sound of "the drums and the chanting" at night (202), and a "blank wall of black secret faces, a wall behind which almost anything could be preparing to happen" (203). They speak in the novel through voodoo tokens - "a pig's bone with a little rotten flesh still clinging to it, a few chicken bones," etc. (203). They torture Sutpen but capitulate to his "indomitable spirit" (205). And after their surrender, it is "as if nothing had happened" (205).

Individual or Group: 
Group
Character changes class in this text: 

digyok:node/character/15433