Teaching The Slave Dancer: History, Ethics, and Race

Introduction: The Slave Dancer as Classroom Text

The Slave Dancer by Paula Fox is, viewed through the eyes of a student, an adventure tale featuring a young protagonist with whom junior high readers can easily identify. In terms of plot, the book tells the story of Jessie Bollier, a thirteen-year-old boy living in 1840, when the American slave trade was still legal. Jessie has recently lost his father and earns money for his family by playing his fife on the docks of New Orleans. One day, without warning, he finds himself aboard a ship called The Moonlight — a slave ship bound for the coast of Africa.

What reads as an exciting adventure story for students is, in the eyes of a teacher, a powerful lesson in history and ethics. Compelled by the crew, Jessie must play his fife so that the enslaved Africans can dance and keep themselves "in condition" — physically fit for the horrific state of enslavement that awaits them. Few Africans survived the journey known as the Middle Passage with bodies or minds intact, and Jessie becomes an unwitting participant in this dark chapter of American history.

Student Identification with Jessie Bollier

The merging of American history and personal identification with the story's main character is conveyed with particular force because young readers can so easily see themselves in Jessie. Like many boys of junior high school age, Jessie is thrust into a situation over which he has almost no control. His father is dead, and he has few resources beyond his own wits. As Fox writes, there is no one who can save him (p. 22). He does not choose his fate — his fate chooses him.

Even students who have never lost a parent can relate to this predicament. Children of junior high school age are universally caught in the tension between dependence and independence, teetering on the edge of childhood and adolescence. They frequently feel subject to forces outside their control. Jessie is ordered around like a small boy, yet he holds a job like an adult and is forced to assume family responsibilities he is not equipped to handle. History then thrusts him into an ethical dilemma that even grown men have failed to resolve.

Over the course of the novel, a portrait of American slavery emerges that students can engage with emotionally. What child has not been thrust into a situation he or she cannot fully understand? What young person has not felt overburdened with too many responsibilities — both adult and childlike — arriving all at once? What student who has suffered the loss of a parent has not felt that he or she lacks the emotional resources to cope? Jessie faces all of these struggles, while simultaneously serving as an unwitting actor in one of history's gravest injustices.

The protagonist is also drawn into a moral conflict that extends beyond the music he is forced to play. He must contend with authority figures such as "Purvis with his horrible coarse jokes, his bawling and cursing" (pp. 47–48). The crew's portrayal suggests that adults are not always trustworthy — another sentiment young readers will recognize — yet because some good men do exist aboard the ship, the novel stops short of depicting a world of total adult betrayal.

Moral and Ethical Dimensions of the Novel

What is most central to teaching The Slave Dancer in the classroom is the moral and ethical dilemma Jessie's situation poses for its young readers: should the boy continue playing for the slaves merely to keep them fit for the enslavement that awaits them? Is it ethical, in other words, to do something ostensibly good in the service of a fundamentally bad cause? This question sits at the heart of ethical reasoning and invites students to bring their own personal experiences to bear — their views on politics and race relations, their feelings about loss, and their understanding of the conditions aboard the ship.

Students can connect these questions to their own lives and communities, making the historical content feel immediate rather than remote. The novel shows that moral choices involving race and human dignity are not unique to any single era, and that even children are sometimes called upon to make decisions that affect other people's lives.

Conclusion

The fictional narrative of The Slave Dancer provides ample support for provoking, rather than rote, questions about students' own relationship to history — from modern race relations back to the colonial era. It demonstrates that issues of race and justice are not particular to any single generation, and that even young people face ethical decisions with real consequences for others' lives. By combining literary engagement, historical inquiry, and cross-disciplinary activities, the novel offers teachers a remarkably versatile tool for the junior high classroom.

Work Cited

Fox, Paula. The Slave Dancer. New York: Random House, 1974.