53 pages • 1 hour read
Elizabeth YatesAmos Fortune, Free Man
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1950A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Singing
Songs and singing are featured throughout the novel, beginning with the At-mun-shi people in Chapter 1 who sing together for the harvest celebration (7). Fortune continues singing throughout his life, such as in Chapter 4, when he sings late at night while working in Richardson’s tannery. The Fortunes find the Burdoos singing as well, and they join in in Chapter 7. Finally, when Fortune tells a story to the Burdoo children, his story is interlaced with their singing. Each time Fortune or the other Black characters sing, the lyrics are quoted and separated from the rest of the text. In doing so, Yates draws the reader’s attention to these songs as distinct and important parts of the story. Further, each of these songs carries religious significance; the At-mun-shi harvest song is addressed to the Earth, Sun, Moon, and Rain; the songs Fortune and the other Black characters sing in the US are all Christian songs.
The Christian songs that Yates includes are all real songs: “I Got To Cross The River Jordan” (63), is by Blind Willie McTell; “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” (123-24), is written by Wallace Willis; and “Deep River” (127) is by an anonymous writer. The inclusion of these songs in the novel is anachronistic, given they were each written in the 19th century, after Amos Fortune’s lifetime. Yates’s use of these songs—which are commonly identified as “Negro spirituals”—reinforces the characters’ Blackness in a way that would be familiar to her readers.
Freedom
The novel presents freedom as the highest human aspiration and something to be loved, as we see in Chapter 1 with the At-mun-shi people who are “intense in their love of freedom” (5). We also see this motif in references to the American Revolutionary War as a “wind of freedom [that] was bound to result in the right of every man to be free” (72), implying that this freedom covers enslaved Black people as well. Yates emphasizes the Revolutionary War moment in Chapter 4 as the height of talk about freedom but does not problematize the fact that Black enslaved people would not see emancipation for almost another century.
The novel also presents freedom as something to be earned. Readers see this in the figure of enslaved Black who fought in the Revolutionary War: “Of the blacks who survived the fighting, many were given their own freedom as a reward for service” (77). The novel also sometimes presents freedom as undesirable or having negative qualities. For example, Fortune reflects on his new freedom in Chapter 5 as “strange” and having “shadow as well as [...] light”; he is disappointed to be “free [...] of household cares and domestic ties” (82) that he experienced while enslaved by the Richardsons and the Copelands. Earlier in the text, when Copeland tries to speak to Fortune about setting the terms of his freedom, Fortune repeatedly insists that he does not yet want his freedom because he “looked up to [Caleb] with reverence and loyalty. He did not want his life to be apart from Caleb in any way” (46).
The White Falcon
The White Falcon is the name of the slave ship that carries Fortune and the other captured African people along the Middle Passage to be enslaved in North America. Historically, the name of the slave ship that transported Fortune was not known, so the name White Falcon is Yates’s invention (Lambert 3). A falcon is a bird of prey, and the ship’s white color represents the enslavers who are preying upon the African people they have captured.
When the At-mun-shi first see the ship, they mistakenly believe that it is “a great bird sent for their deliverance” (20). While there is irony in the At-mun-shi’s assumption that the White Falcon will be their salvation when it is instead their entrance into enslavement, the ship as a symbol of deliverance is actually consistent with the novel’s argument that slavery is a benevolent institution.
The Reflective Tin Sheet
The reflective tin sheet that Fortune buys for Mrs. Richardson in Chapter 4 is not only a literal mirror but also a metaphorical symbol of self-reflection for Fortune. It enables him to reflect on the passage of time, on the process of aging, and on the space and time that have divided his early life with his sister and his present life with the Richardsons. Looking in the mirror and seeing his sister’s reflection is a turning point for Fortune, as he realizes he has been looking for his sister as the young girl she used to be, not the older woman she would be at that time. As a gift and a “piece of finery” (61), the reflective tin sheet also symbolizes material goods, foreshadowing the wealth and many material items that Fortune will acquire when he is free and a successful tanner in Jaffrey.
Animals
The novel repeatedly compares Black people to animals. In some instances, the comparisons are used to describe Fortune as docile or unassuming when he was a boy newly brought to Boston. In Chapter 3, Mrs. Copeland calls Fortune a “poor Black lamb” (37). Likewise, when Fortune responds to Mrs. Copeland’s prompt, the narrative describes him as being “like an obedient dog” (38). Mr. and Mrs. Copeland discuss their choice to withhold Fortune’s freedom for the time being, saying, “He is part animal now. What would he do but run wild?” (35) These comparisons extend to Moses Burdoo as well, the oldest child in the Burdoo family. When Moses is sold to Joseph Stewart at auction, Yates writes: “[Stewart] was a hard man, but the boy was like a colt and could profit by a firm hand” (156). These comparisons represent anti-Black racist ideologies that have historically portrayed Black people as sub-human. As Yates compares Fortune and Moses to lambs, dogs, and colts, she ascribes the qualities of those animals to them and further distinguishes their humanity as less than that of the white people who view them this way.
