Middle Passage (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
At a glance:
- Author: Charles Johnson
- First Published: 1990
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Bildungsroman
- Time of Work: 1830
- Setting: On board a slave ship
- Genres: Long fiction
- Subjects: African Americans
- Locales: Africa
Characters Discussed
Rutherford Calhoun, the novel’s first-person narrator. Calhoun, a well-educated and pleasure- seeking slave, is manumitted at the age of twenty-one. Angered by his brother’s refusal of their master’s wealth, Calhoun leaves rural Illinois for New Orleans, where he survives on charm, thievery, and lies. When Boston schoolteacher Isadora Bailey, aided by black underworld king Papa Zeringue, attempts to force Calhoun into marriage, he stows away on the Republic, a slave ship about to sail to Africa. His shipmates are divided into many factions, and...
[The entire page is 1086 words long]
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