Crossing the River, By Caryl Philips Multiplicities of voices, multiplicities of perspectives:

Caryl Phillips' novel Crossing the River

Caryl Phillips' novel Crossing the River utilizes multiple perspectives to illustrate the horrors of American slavery. Rather than condemning the institution from a contemporary viewpoint, Phillips imagines himself within the minds and hearts of various figures that represent different aspects of the institution, such as slaveholders, slaves, and children of masters and slaves. A common theme that occurs and reoccurs in the novel is the question of understanding and misunderstanding. Slaves are continually 'mis-read' by masters, and even well-meaning whites fail to understand the perspective of people in bondage. The worldview of slavery dominates the minds and culture of whites and blacks to such a degree that not even African-Americans can accept themselves. Unlike novels detailing the plight of slaves in the south, Phillips' western setting acutely highlights the essential paradox of the concept of freedom as embodied in frontier ideology. The frontier was supposed to embody possibility and choice, but for slaves, going West meant even less of a chance to escape Eastward or to Canada.

The inability of slaves to articulate their unique perspective of the world is revealed in the story of Martha, a slave woman who attempts to escape to freedom. Martha, because of her age and fragile health, dies in her quest for freedom, although a woman does willingly give Martha shelter upon Martha's final night on earth. However, although Martha does not believe in God, the white woman buries her in a religious ceremony, illustrating the woman's inability...

Martha's voice is articulate, and Phillips allows her to raise her voice in prose, even while society has taken away her life and does not listen to her while she is alive or dead.
The prejudiced view of African-Americans and Africans held by whites is so all-encompassing at the beginning of the novel that even whites who feel that slavery is wrong seem powerless to resist its forces. James Hamilton, a slave-trader, hates the institution and cannot morally justify his profession in letters home to his 'dearest' wife. According to his Christian worldview, all men are equal, yet James is able to hold this belief system while systematically oppressing his fellow human beings. His 'log notes' catalogued in the novel are cool and clinical, and instruct his staff to dispose of the sickly slaves who are of no use to him, yet his letters to his wife do not even speak of the horrors he is perpetrating, as if he is numb or blind to the murders he is enabling. Hamilton does not seem to understand how to behave in a manner that is not exploitative because it has become a part of his life, his daily actions -- it is a vocation he despises, yet it is his vocation.

The plantation owner Edward Williams likewise is able to say he abhors slavery, yet profits by the institution because it is socially allowed. His wife Amelia Williams is silent upon the subject, like most white women, despite her husband's infidelities with slave women. Edward's his half-black son Nash seems infected by the concept of black inferiority like his father. Nash tries to convert the black Africans as a missionary, eventually…