Middle Passage

Homo Est Quo Dammodo Omnia

The quotation "Homo est quo dammodo omnia", attributed to Saint Thomas Aquinas, may be translated "In a way, man is everything". It serves as one of three epigraphs to Charles Johnson's 1990 National Book Award winning novel, "Middle Passage". Robert Hayden's poem "Middle Passage" about the terrors of slavers and a statement from the Upanishads: "Who sees variety and not the Unity wanders on from death to death" serve as the other two epigraphs for Johnson's beautifully complex and erudite philosophical novel, set largely on an illegal slave ship from New Orleans in 1830.

Charles Johnson (b. 1948) became the first African American novelist to win the National Book Award following Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man" which received the honor in 1953. A professor of philosophy and English for many years, Johnson is also an essayist, screenwriter, and novelist. He has long been a practicing Buddhist. "Middle Passage" reflects his interest in understanding America, its history, and capacity for change. The book is also a sea yarn of sorts written to entertain. The book is heavily allusive to the literature of the sea, particularly to novels of Herman Melville and to Homer's "Odyssey".

The main character and the book's narrator, Rutherford Calhoun, 22, is a manumitted former slave from southern Illinois who has moved to New Orleans where he becomes a gambler, womanizer and petty thief. He has a relationship with Isadora, an African American schoolteacher from Boston. When he becomes pressed by his debts and by Isadora's desire to marry, he stows away on the first ship out of New Orleans, a rickety and illegal slaver, with the suggestive name, the "Republic". (Congress had outlawed the international slave trade in 1808,) In a memorable opening sentence, Calhoun observes that "Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I've come to learn, is women." The "Republic" sails to Africa in search of taking captives from a tribe called the Allmuseri. This is a fictitious entity. Johnson elaborately develops the belief system of the Allmuseri, and their god, who becomes a captive on the ship together with his people.

The book combines realism, philosophy and myth. Calhoun is tough and street-smart and has a remarkable way with words. He changes from a thief to a writer and reflective thinker in the course of the book. He also is possessed of remarkable erudition, attributed to the kindness of his former master, a learned clergyman who hated slavery, in Illinois. Scenes on the outgoing voyage, in Africa, and on the return are described in detail in passages which range from the humorous to the shocking. The leaky and unreliable "Republic" is buffeted by storms and Calhoun becomes involved in a mutiny by some of the crew against the captain, in the captain's efforts to defend himself, and in a rebellion by the Allmuseri en route.

The history in the book is combined with a great deal of anachronism and with philosophical/religious discussion which owes a great deal to Buddhism. Thus the novel is not a straightforward history of a slave ship. Rather, Johnson probes beneath the surface to develop a metaphysics about non-duality -- the unitary character of experience -- and an understanding of the United States, tied into non-duality and based upon the need of Americans of every background to see and understand themselves as a people and to avoid polarizing fights about identities. A crucial goal of the book, I think, is to help Americans to understand themselves. Late in the novel, as his character is transformed by his experiences Calhoun reflects upon what America, with its faults, has come to mean to him as a black man:

"The States were hardly the sort of place a Negro would pine for, but pine for them I did. Even for that I was ready now after months at sea, for the strangeness and mystery of black life, even for the endless round of social obstacles and challenges and trials colored men faced every blessed day of their lives, for there were indeed triumphs, I remembered, that balanced the suffering on shore, small yet enduring things, very deep, that Isadora often pointed out to me during our evening walks. If this weird, upside-down caricature of a country called America, if this land of refugees and former indentured servants, religious heretics and half-breeds, whoresons and fugitives-- this cauldron of mongrels from all points on the compass -- was all I could rightly call home, then aye: I was of it. There, as I lay weakened from bleeding, was where I wanted to be."

I thought of the approaching Independence Day holiday in reading this book. I also thought of the polarization in our country and of the need for people of varying identities and beliefs to come together as, in the simplest metaphor in this book, seamen on a ship. I have seen interviews Johnson gave in the years following "Middle Passage" in which he discusses the role of American literature in encouraging individuals to think of themselves as sharing in an America rather than being entrapped in their own smaller ideas of identities. His book has great breadth and development as it moves from the individual story of Rutherford Calhoun and his development from his days as a former slave and petty crook. The book encourages reflection on the nature of the United States as well as on philosophical questions on the nature of reality. I think this 1990 National Book Award-winning novel deserves more attention that it currently receives. It is a modern American classic.

Robin Friedman