Washington Black

You took me on because I was helpful in your political cause. Because I could aid in your experiments. Beyond that I was of no use to you, and so you abandoned me.” I struggled to get my breath. “I was nothing to you. You never saw me as equal. You were more concerned that slavery should be a moral stain upon white men than by the actual damage it wreaks on black men.

You were more concerned that slavery should be a moral stain upon white men than by the actual damage it wreaks on black men.

We must all take on faith the stories of our birth, for though we are in them, we are not yet present.

I understood there were many ways of being in the world, that to privilege one rigid set of beliefs over another was to lose something. Everything is bizarre, and everything has value. Or if not value, at least merits investigation.

There are several kinds of happiness, Washington. Sometimes it is not for us to choose, or even understand, the one granted us.

Negroes are God’s creatures also, with all due rights and freedoms. Slavery is a moral stain against us. If anything will keep white men from their heaven, it is this.

Such a thing is not possible." I peered quietly at him. "Nothing is possible, sir, until it is made so.

How could he have treated me so, he who congratulated himself on his belief that I was his equal? I had never been his equal. To him, perhaps, any deep acceptance of equality was impossible. He saw only those who were there to be saved, and those did the saving.

I thought of my existence before Titch's arrival, the brutal hours in the field under the crushing sun, the screams, the casual finality edging every slave's life, as though each day could very easily be the last. And that, it seemed to me clearly, was the more obvious anguish- that life had never belonged to any of us, even when we'd sought to reclaim it by ending it. We had been estranged from the potential of our own bodies, from the revelation of everything our minds and bodies could accomplish.

The wrecked visage I was forced to carry like an unwanted warning to others was to her a known thing, a familiar mask. She seemed to see beneath it something of her own suffering and recovery—the acceptance of a life-changing wound, the will to go on.

But I thought I understood what she would not ask. I understood she desired to know if I had found what I was seeking, if this trip would finally satisfy my erratic pursuit of an unanswerable truth, if it would calm my sense of rootlessness, solve the chaos of my origins for me. She wanted to know if anything would be laid to rest, or if we’d continue to drift through the world together, going from place to place until I made her like me, so lacking a foothold anywhere that nowhere felt like home.

Be faithful to what you see, Washington, and not to what you are supposed to see.

But human faces are so interesting,” said I. “Yes, to be sure. But when you are looking at one face, you are not looking at another. You are privileging that face. You are deciding who is worthy of observation and who is not. You are choosing who is worth preserving.

I hesitate, I suppose it is only from a general dread of company. We all of us wish for it, in our solitude, but on the eve of a great visit, we shudder.

My current life, I realized, was constructed around an absence; for all its richness I still felt as if the floors might give way, as if its core were only a covering of leaves, and I would slip through, falling endlessly, never to get my footing.

Life holds a sanctity for them we can scarcely begin to imagine; it therefore struck them as absurd that someone would choose to end it.

The dead have no compassion for the living.

How strange it felt to be alive, and whole, and astonishingly worth saving.

How easy it is, to waste a life.

I had long seen science as the great equalizer. No matter one's race, or sex, or faith - there were facts in the world waiting to be discovered. How little thought I'd given to the ways in which it might be corrupted.

The first rule of science, Captain, is to doubt appearances and to seek substances in their stead.

Though a child, I did not picture a monster—he was no creature all teeth, all vicious blue eyes behind mangled wire spectacles; his voice was not slow and reptilian, his hands not huge black claws. I knew the nature of evil; I knew its benign, easy face. He would be a man, simply.

What a strange journey we embarked upon that afternoon, full of anguish and desire and wonder.

It was I who had failed in my understanding, you see. Life holds a sanctity for them (referring to Solomon Islanders) we can scarcely begin to imagine; it therefore struck them as absurd that someone would choose to end it. A great ludicrous act. In any case, it was then I recognized that my own values - the tenets I hold dear as an Englishman - they were not the only, nor the best values in existence. I understood there were many ways of being in the world, that to privilege one rigid set of beliefs over another was to lose something. Everything is bizarre, and everything has value. Or if not value, at least merits investigation.

You cannot know the true nature of another's suffering." "No. But you can try your damnedest not to worsen it.

Sometimes...I will stand ...and look upon the babe's face at a distance. I almost cannot bear it: the soft skin, the tenderness, the eyes so guileless and trusting. I would almost wish the innocent to be stricken at once, there, in God's house. To keep such purity intact. From the arms of God to the arms of God.

...a good parent is as rare as snow in summer, I am afraid. Well." He smiled sadly. "It is possible I have some prejudices in this respect.

Everything is bizarre, and everything has value. Or if not value, at least merits investigation.

Children know everything about beauty,” Titch countered softly. “It is adults who have forgotten.

Freedom, Wash, is a word with different meanings to different people,” he said, as though I did not know the truth of this better than he.