Questions:
1. At what point in Scenes 1 and 2 does the recurring image of the road appear? What significance does the road hold for the former slaves?

2. Who is Martha Pentecost, and why won’t Seth inform Herald that he knows where Martha resides?

3. What is the Binding Song, where does it originate, and what does it mean to Bynum?

4. What are Rutherford Selig’s occupations? What power does he gain from them?

5. What were the professions of Rutherford Selig’s father and grandfather? How are these linked to Selig’s role as a people finder?

Answers:
1. The road is a constant image in the play because it physically connects people to and from the Hollys’ boardinghouse. Herald and Zonia have been traveling for a while, seeking Martha Loomis. Jeremy works on constructing a new road. Bynum realizes his identity and receives his Binding Song while walking down a road. For former slaves, the road is significant because, after slavery ended, freed slaves journeyed along these roads, heading North to seek new lives. However, as shown by the experiences of Herald and Bynum, this journey is not an "easy road" to travel. Thus, the road symbolizes both freedom and hardship.

2. Martha Pentecost matches the description of Herald’s long-lost wife, Martha Loomis. Seth refuses to tell Herald that he knows his wife and her location because he doesn’t trust Herald. To the irritable, free-born Seth, Herald seems disheveled, hostile, and unstable.

3. The Binding Song is a potent conjuring chant that Bynum received during what might have been a vision or a dream. Although a shiny man led Bynum to the bend in the road where he obtained the song, it was Bynum’s father, also a rootworker, who gave it to him. The Binding Song represents Bynum’s identity, and he takes his name from it because he uses it to bind people together.

4. Selig has two occupations: he is a peddler who travels up the river selling goods like pots and dustpans, and he is a people finder. His job as a traveling peddler makes it easy for him to locate people. Selig gains a certain amount of power from knowing where people are, and he profits by finding them for others. It could be argued that Selig is exploiting people by charging a dollar to "find" individuals when he could easily do it for free, given that he’s already traveling as a peddler.

5. Selig’s grandfather transported Africans to America as slaves, while his father hunted down runaway slaves and returned them to plantations. Selig’s job is connected to these roles, as Bertha points out, because Selig never “finds” someone he hasn’t already displaced. Bertha’s observation suggests that Selig’s work is similar to that of his father and grandfather, as his father never “found” and captured anyone whom his grandfather hadn’t originally taken from their African “homeland.”