Middle Passage

Middle Passage Review

From the very beginning of Middle Passage, Charles Johnson has already launched his readers into active engagement with his protagonist and narrator, Rutherford Calhoun. The story is broken into eight diary entries, and throughout Calhoun's first entry, he gives justifications of why he has sought to escape to sea. In building precedence upon his incessant hunger for adventure, it permeated throughout like an undertow for his first entry. Sure, it might've been a "set-up" that took him aboard the ship, but readers already knew as Calhoun had revealed earlier of being envious of the sailors. Perhaps he too wanted to "escape the vanities cityfolk called self-interest, the mediocrity the called achievement, the blatant selfishness they called individual freedom" (Middle Passage 4). This unrelenting desire was irreconcilable until he finally reached his designation, aboard ship call the Republic. Yes it is escape Calhoun speaks of, yet Middle Passage really is the antithesis for escape, rather, it confronts the layers beneath the surface of one's true identity. His subconscious--as how the ocean represents--drove him to "get out," be lost in that state of unknown, so he might engage his true identity apart from the futile everyday masks he wanted no part in.

Since Johnson had set up Calhoun as one who is somewhat masochistic and self-conflicted, naturally, it seemed instability; threats of outbreak and chaos are always around the corner. From the very beginning, I found myself dreading for what's to come, for it felt like I was walking into Calhoun's dark tunnel, I expected no light to come until the last entry, and it didn't. In spite of having been raised privileged--as to the slaves at that time--in his upbringing, he was classic prodigal, who might have equated living responsibly as ill-desired. There was something Calhoun wanted to prove to his former slave master, a reverend, and also his well-to-do brother. Untamed and defiant to the norms of societal expectations, he seemed quite conscious of inner rebellion to his childhood past. Truth is, what he ultimately desire is wholeness; a unity with the inferiority experiences as the abandoned son by his father. The layers upon layers were calling for him to excavate, could only be achieved being "lost" at sea. And as Calhoun returned ashore, he was rewarded with what he had wanted all along, to finally feel as though he's home. He now possesses character and selflessness, and he is at rest with the woman he first escaped from, Isadora. This goal was realized as he returned to his starting point, the story has traveled full circle, and thus, Calhoun have indeed accomplished the very thing he wanted, to be.

Middle Passage Feature

• ISBN13: 9780684855882
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Middle Passage Overview

It is 1830. Rutherford Calhoun, a newly treed slave and irrepressible rogue, is desperate to escape unscrupulous bill collectors and an impending marriage to a priggish schoolteacher. He jumps aboard the first boat leaving New Orleans, the Republic, a slave ship en route to collect members of a legendary African tribe, the Allmuseri. Thus begins a daring voyage of horror and self-discovery.

Peopled with vivid and unforgettable characters, nimble in its interplay of comedy and serious ideas, this dazzling modern classic is a perfect blend of the picaresque tale, historical romance, sea yarn, slave narrative, and philosophical novel.

Middle Passage Specifications

In this savage parable of the African American experience, Rutherford Calhoun, a newly freed slave eking out a living in New Orleans in 1830, hops aboard a square rigger to evade the prim Boston schoolteacher who wants to marry him. But the Republic turns out to be a slave clipper bound for Africa. Calhoun, whose master educated him as a humanist, becomes the captain's cabin boy, and though he hates himself for acting as a lackey, he's able to help the African slaves recently taken aboard to stage a revolt before the rowdy, drunken crew can spring a mutiny. Middle Passage won the 1990 National Book Award.

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