A Mercy

Title: A Mercy

Author: Toni Morrison

Publisher: Knopf

Publish date: 2008

ISBN: 978-0-307-26423-7

Book quote:

‘These careful words, closed up and wide open, will talk to themselves. (…) Or. Or perhaps no. Perhaps these words need the air that is out in the world. Need to fly up then fall, fall like ash over acres of primrose and mallow.’

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A discussion on the theme of subjugation, possession and protection in late 17^th century America, this novel is like cobweb: both filamentous and strong.

The main timeline of the plot is a few days’ duration, while Florens (a Portuguese-African slave girl) ventures off on her own to find help for her mistress, who is afflicted with smallpox. The chapters alternate POV between the main characters in the book, and through their recollections and associative thinking a larger picture of their narratives before and after is depicted.

Many readers say that the central theme is slavery. It’s not. It’s oppression across the board, how people create their own ‘sanity’ within the confines of their individual circumstances, and above all how they communicate with each other. Florens is docile and eager to please – later terrifyingly independent when circumstances change. Sorrow creates her version of sanity inside seeming madness. Jacob within his hubristic new house. Lina within her re-creation of herself as an all-dependable fount of calm and knowledge. Their chapters send out filaments to criss-cross each other’s narratives like hyphae, intricate and fertilizing. Eventually, with the glue that binds them together gone, their connections dissolve like so much candy-floss in water. The tenor of the novel seems to intimate that despite the transitory nature of their connections, the depth of their emotions at the time etches significance into the bond that exists after dissolution like seared light on the retina.

From the Blacksmith down – so stylized he doesn’t even get a name - you could say the characters are cut-outs. Arranged for the purposes of plot and significance, tokens as representative as chess pieces. The white mail-order bride, the Protestant tradesman, the Popish ignoramuses, the black slave girl, the Noble Savage with flowing hair, the brutish slave trader, even an Irish (?) pirate’s daughter. Through the confines of their place in the plot, and their place in their circumstances, they sing a cantata more poetry than prose. They’re stuck there, sending out tentacles, and it’s a mesmerizing process to behold.

The breakdown of the relationships and their hyphae reflects the isolation that ultimately each character, and by inference every member of humanity, suffers. The most poignant isolation and communication breakdown is between Florens and her mother. Florens seeks her mother’s ‘answer’ throughout the novel but will never find it. Only the reader sees from above, only the reader can weep at the wasted struggles and pitiful, mismatched desires.

Five Moose-Hoofs up. Only set aside a good chunk of a day when you intend to read it because you won’t be able to put it down.