THE WATER DANCER by Ta-Nehesi Coates
SUMMARY
In Part I, Hiram is a slave on the estate of Lockless in Virgina. He has a power called “Conduction” where he can transport himself or others, but he doesn’t know how to control it. His father is white and the master of Lockless, Howell. Hiram’s mother Rose was sold when he was young, but Thena, another slave, helps to raise him. Hiram is intelligent, unlike his (white) brother Maynard, who is a fool. When Howell assigns Hiram a tutor, Hiram hopes it is to help him become master of Lockless one day, but his dreams are crushed when he learns it was all for him to be Maynard’s personal servant. Later, Maynard passes away in an accident that Hiram survives because his Conduction abilities kick in. One day, Hiram tries to run away with another slave named Sofia, but he is betrayed, and they are captured.
In Part II, Hiram is bought and mistreated until he is injured which triggers his Conduction ability. He’s brought to a woman, Corrine, who is connected to the Underground, which frees slaves. She wants him to use his power to help the Underground, and Hiram is sent to Philadelphia to work from there. Hiram spends the year there and is glad to help free other slaves, and he meets Thena’s daughter. He comes across Harriet Tubman, nicknamed “Moses,” who is the only other person with the Conduction power. She teaches him that Conduction relies on the power of memories and requires water to function. Hiram also still thinks about Sofia, and he learns that Sofia is back at Lockless.
In Part III, Hiram returns to Virginia to free Sofia and Thena. He goes back to work for his father, who thinks he’s been working for Corrine the whole time. He finds Sofia pregnant with another man’s baby, but Hiram vows to love her and the baby. Corrine acquires Sofia so they can be together. At Lockless, Hiram finds a necklace that awakens a painful memory of his father selling his mother, which unlocks the full potential of his Conductive abilities. He uses that power to free Thena and send her to be with her daughter. When Howell passes away, Corrine acquires Lockless and asks Hiram to oversee it, effectively making him the master of Lockless. Sofia and Hiram stay there to raise the baby.
ANALYSIS: HISTORICAL
Memory is a tool for saving. "The Water Dancer is filled with real details from history, although these details are often alluded to in a veiled manner, thereby reminding readers of the fictional status of the narrative. The novel is set in the mid-19th century", (Anonymous,n.d.). The novel entitled "The Water Dancer" was from the leading American thinker wherein it was set in Virginia during the pre-civil war on a slave plantation called Lockless in Starfall, Elm Country. The Lockless was leaded by the whites wherein the blacks were in the bondage of slavery. "Virginia is a hierarchy; at the top are the quality, white slave owners with the power of life and death over their chief possession, their slaves. Next are the low – poor whites, mostly uneducated, employed by the quality to supervise the plantations and keep the enslaved in check. After them are the freed, former slaves who were able to buy their own freedom. At the very bottom are the Tasked, the enslaved",(Habola, 2020). Many of the tasked were trying their best to serve in order to buy their freedom. However, others cannot be able to do it, in fact, they were abused, others were sold, their family members died, etc. In other words, their rights as humans were denied by the whites.
What if memory had the power to transport enslaved people to freedom? Coates' work, The Water Dancer is a melancholic and suspenseful novel that merges the slavery narrative with the genres of fantasy or quest novels. Coates' protagonist, Hiram Walker, can remember everything like faces, stories, facts with photographic recall. But one thing that he cannot remember, his own mother who was sold by his father when he was only 9 years old. "The summoning of personal feeling, faith or memory to access supernatural powers is a regular trope of fantasy. But for Coates, remembering is not only a personal process, it involves tapping into the collective culture, memory and pain of generations", (Quinn, A.,2019). Indeed, the life of black Americans became dark and what they did was to feel the pain but still hoping to get the freedom that they deserved. Quinn added that the novel distinguishes between history and memory. For black Americans, "inherited memory is more important, and more true, than history, because they are treated like "objects of history, not subjects within it." I think this was too obvious in the novel especially in the role of Hiram, where memory plays a vital role to save others. "For me, the most moving part of The Water Dancer was not Hiram's escape or the escape of the people he loves, but the possibility it offers of an alternate history. Coates quoted that the negroes, in the meantime, who had gotten off, continued dancing among the waves, yelling with all their might, what seemed to me a song of triumph", (Quinn, A.,2019). This means that the most painful thing that can be observed in the novel was the people who leaped off slave ships and into the Atlantic were not drowning themselves in terror and anguish, but going home.
In conclusion, I believed that Coates' novel aims the readers to reflect on black enslavement, while giving thought in today’s society. "Using historical characters like Harriet Tubman, he wanted the novel’s characters to continue the unflinching will-power that the survivors of slavery had", (Barnes, P., 2019). This was true to black people in America of having to work twice as hard as their white counterparts. In fact, as we observed in the novel, Coates said that “the loss of family” was a key theme, and that separation from family was like a “death sentence” because they would never see each other again. This was a kind of fantasy that really moved the heart of the readers since it talks about the half realistic and once happened in American's history in the past 10 years of activism in the community after Coates wrote it. Blacks were still hopeful amidst hardships that one day, they will be out from the bondage of slavery. Indeed, memory ruled over it. That is how recalling the past works in the novel.
REFERENCES
Historical Context.....(n.d.). Historical Context of The Water Dancer. Retrieved from https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-water-dancer
Barnes, P. (2019).The Water Dancer’ Links Historical and Modern-day Racial Disparities. Retrieved from https://columbiachronicle.com/the-water-dancer-book-bridges-historical-and-modern-day-racial-disparities
Habola,H. (2020). The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates review – a slave’s story. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/31/the-water-dancer-ta-nehisi-coates-review
Quinn, A. (2019). In 'The Water Dancer,' Ta-Nehisi Coates Creates Magical Alternate History. Retrievd from https://www.npr.org/2019/09/26/764373265/in-the-water-dancer-memory-is-the-path-to-freedom
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