Going to the South explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Dehumanization and Commodification

  Slaves are treated as commodities: their ages are falsified for market, families are torn apart by sale, and they are advertised like livestock.

• Family Destruction Under Slavery

  Currer is sold away from her daughter Althesa, and Clotel is separated from her mother and sister without warning.

• Corruption of Christianity

  A clergyman purchases Currer for house service, highlighting the hypocrisy of religious figures participating in the slave trade.

Characters to notice

• Currer

  Purchased by Walker and transported south; sold to a clergyman in Natchez, separated from her daughter Althesa.

• Althesa

  Travels with her mother Currer; devastated when Currer is sold away from her.

• Mr. Walker

  Slave speculator who buys and transports slaves to New Orleans; sells Currer to a clergyman.

• Pompey

  Walker's assistant, a slave who prepares the older slaves for market by lying about their ages.

• Clotel

  Mentioned as having visited the prison daily to see her mother and sister, but unaware of their departure.

Key passages

• “Dick Walker, the slave speculator who had purchased Currer and Althesa, put them in prison until his gang was made up, and then, with his forty slaves, started for the New Orleans market.”

  The slave trader Dick Walker, who had bought Currer and Althesa, kept them in jail until he had assembled a group of forty slaves, then began the journey to sell them in New Orleans.

  Introduces the forced relocation of Currer and Althesa to the Southern slave market.

• “Pompey had long been with the trader, and knew his business; and if he did not take delight in discharging his duty, he did it with a degree of alacrity, so that he might receive the approbation of his master.”

  Pompey, who had worked for the trader for many years, performed his tasks eagerly to gain his master's approval, even though the work involved preparing slaves for sale.

  Illustrates the complicity of some enslaved people in the slave trade system.

• “If you buy me, I hope you will buy my daughter too,' said the woman, in rather an excited manner.”

  Currer pleaded with the clergyman to purchase her daughter Althesa along with her, showing her desperation to keep her family together.

  Highlights the emotional trauma of family separation during slave sales.