American Literature

Liberty was a seed that if planted in poor soil failed to vegetate into maturity. It was the child of reason. Before men can benefit from the wisdom of laws, it was necessary they should have some idea of freedom (Hartman, 2007). These excerpts from The Dead Book in Saidiya Hartmans Lose Your Mother A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route indeed tells us the importance of truly and clearly understanding ones ancestral past in order to give greater value to what he or she is enjoying at present. These quotes signify Hartmans deep sentiments of not truly knowing her true identity because of a disconnection of her past (African) and present (African American), a cut off between her home (Ghana) and exile (America) a separation between ones kinship and identity and  the consequences of detaching a child from the mothers womb before natural birth  (Schmidt, 2009).

In this eloquent, thoughtful, deeply affecting and heartbreaking chapter accounting the plight of the slaves in the Atlantic slave trade, Hartman gave us a glimpse of the horrible history of Atlantic slave trading from the fifteenth to the twentieth century, while searching for her kin in Ghana, a West African country bordering on the Gulf of Guinea. In The Dead Book, Hartman focuses on all the atrocities experienced by the slaves in their route to the Atlantic slave trade. These were narrated and exposed in the aim of making the world conscious on the ill, inhumane and unjust treatment experienced by the blacks in the hands of their captors. As mentioned in this chapter, the slaves were treated just like any other cargoes (commodities) and we are talking here about non humans. Some slaves were thrown at sea alive to minimize the captains losses and in order to claim for insurance which is worth  30 for each slave lost to the perils of the sea (Hartman, 2007). The highlight as mentioned in the chapter is the horrifying story of the fourteen-year-old slave girl, who was suspended alternately by the leg while being consistently whipped until she died. She was murdered aboard the Recovery ship by the captain. Deaths of the slaves in this ship were treated ordinarily, not really different at all from a rotten fruit.

The narratives in this book have shown us that the lives of the slaves on board the Recovery (ship) were nothing different from animals and are just within the hands and mercy of the captain. It is him who decides who stays, who lives and who dies unless the slaves themselves decide to end their lives for not having borne the pain inflicted to them physically and emotionally. No value was given to their precious lives except that they are worth every penny once sold. The slaves were denied the opportunities of being respected and considered equal just like any other members of the human race. They are purely considered as goods, treated like animals, whose purpose is just to satisfy their masters. The men were as good as workers who need to perform hard labor while the women are being treated as not any different at all from whores, forced to have sex with the ships crew even if its against their will. What is even worse is that these deaths dont have the chance to be known by the public because they are not listed as part of the Dead Book, a book where all the casualties during the ships journey are supposedly listed. This book plays an important role in the journey of the slaves for there are many wasted lives that have not been published in this book and the sea is the only living witness to all of these.

In the Dead Book the true conditions and experiences of the Africans during the period when slave trading was on its heights were narrated and exposed.  It aims to awaken the consciousness of the world on the existence of racism against the blacks and the injustices they have experienced in the hands of the people who considered themselves superior and powerful  the whites. Indeed, the Dead Books revelations has served its purpose and made us all realize that it requires one to fully understand what has gone in the past in order to appreciate the present conditions and to be able to give great value to the freedom being enjoyed at present  a freedom that the slaves on board the Recovery ship never had the chance to know its existence.