Wash

What a book! I like the way the author was able to capture the story of one child from his mother's first experience with their master until the end of his life. Very sad subject matter, but a part of history. I'm so thankful people aren't "owned" by other people in the United States any more. Interesting and captivating all the way through. Glad I read it.

Fifty Shades of Wash
A literary analysis on the Dark-Light spectrum dichotomy of human moral character and the equalization factor of death as it applies to the novel Wash by Margret Wrinkle.

Wash, a novel by Margaret Wrinkle is set within Tennessee during the early to mid-1800’s. Following the main character, Wash (short for Washington) an African American male sex slave. Joined by a host of others such as Pallas the Healer; and Richardson Wash’s owner.
From the very beginning when I first opened this book, I could see the visible dichotomy of Dark vs. Light and Evil vs. Good. However, as in real life this dichotomy is not so simple within the world of Wash. The world is not simply Dark or Light; it exists along with the people who inhabit it, within a spectrum, in shades of Gray. Within this gray colored world, the truly equalizing factor amongst all of its inhabitants is the stark and grim reality that is death.
To illustrate these points, we must first analyze the characters themselves as they exist within their fictional world; and attempt to unravel where they fall on the dichotomy’s spectrum. We will begin with Pallas. Pallas; the healer, the lover, and perhaps the largest proponent for the Light side within this novel. Through her work as a midwife and healer, it may be argued that she has a natural affiliation with the Light and with good. One who works their hardest to ease the suffering of others and help bring new lives into a cruel world would have to have some large amount of good and light within their heart I would imagine. In a similar way, through her relationship with Wash, our story’s protagonist, it is evident that she carries within herself not only a good heart, but a loving soul as well. Helping to ease Wash’s pain and helping him to recover from the events he has seen and been put through shows that love is not lost even in the darkest moments of human life.
Continuing along, we will now analyze the opposite side of the dichotomy, Richardson. Richardson is perhaps one of the more difficult characters to analyze on this spectrum due to his motivations and how they affect both himself and others. Obviously he is a slave owner, having many slaves other than Wash under his control. He is Wash’s owner, and Wash is his breeding sire who is rented out to other slave owners to impregnate their slaves. Richardson literally sells and rents Wash out in multiple instances to travel and breed with the slaves of other slave owners. His motivations for this may not be entirely dark, but in my mind they are dark enough to put him firmly within that side of the dichotomy. Richardson regretfully sells Wash out because he is in debt and in need of extra money. It can be argued that money is the root of all evil; and while not always true the saying does hold some measure within life. What I believe to be one of Richardson’s defining characteristics is his greed. There is a reason he sells Wash out and I believe that reason to be that he is a man driven by his greed of money and wealth. There is a reason greed is referred to as one of the seven deadly sins, and that is because of what it can lead people to do. One other fact which we know about Richardson is that he has killed. Though it was in arguable self-defense, he has willingly taken the life of another being, a being he happened to deploringly own at the time. Though Richardson’s motivations and actions are rather arguably gray, I find them close enough to dark that I would classify him as such within the dichotomy. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Richardson, more than any other exemplifies this quote within my mind.
Finally, we come to the Gray area of the Dark-Light spectrum dichotomy. This Gray area is inhabited by none other than Wash himself. Throughout Wrinkle’s writing, the character of Wash has remained relatively neutral in matters of discourse and politics. He is a former runaway slave, a current sex slave, and a man who has seen and suffered the violence of the world first hand. It is my personal belief that he is disenfranchised with not only his personal situation, but with the world at large. This leads to him adapting a solidly Gray and neutral stance on life. Symbolically near the end of the book, he finds himself in possession of Richardson’s log book. In a highly symbolic move, he pitches the book into a burning building, allowing it to catch aflame and be destroyed. Simultaneously symbolically destroying that record of his life and the years worth of pain which wrought it.
As we can clearly see, as in real life so too does this book display for all the many intricacies and nuances of human morals as they apply to a Dark-Gray-Light spectrum dichotomy of behavior. Upon analyzation, all is very rarely as Black and White as it may all too often seem. The world in which these characters find themselves, much like our own exists in shades of Gray.
We now have our characters, and their standing on the spectrum of Dark-Light sorted. We have Richardson, the personification of Dark/Dark Gray. We have Wash, the proverbial neutral party and his firm standing within the heart of Gray. We have Pallas, the embodiment of the Light end of the spectrum. Now we will cast our eyes upon the one factor that equalizes and connects them all: Death.
Death. The final ending; the next great adventure. For most; there is no glory in it. No fantastic final battle, no fighting it, no glorious defiance against it. All too often it comes out of the blue, takes who it was meant to, and retreats as fast as it came.
Wash, our protagonist and champion of the Gray neutral ground died a simple death. Having come to steal him as he was resting with Pallas after setting the barn alight. Richardson, the one who strays closest to the Dark dies not as a hero nor as a villain, but is taken from this world by illness in a fit of coughing. He dies the same death as many other men of the time period did, for medicine was far from advanced or available. Pallas, the healer of Light lives long enough to see the growth of all of Wash’s children. She sees Wash in them all. Though her death is unmentioned directly in the text; it is my belief that she eventually passes from old age after seeing how all things are connected. Three characters, three different points on the spectrum of Dark and Light and Gray. All die the same lackluster deaths as many did and as many still do. In death, there exists no difference between them. In death they are equal.
In this world, we live in shades of Gray. Our morals, our character, our actions; all fall along a spectrum. There is more than Dark and Light within this world and within each of us. Just as there is an angel, so too is there a monster inside all of us. Things are rarely as simple as they may seem. In the end, death does not discriminate. Not by class, nor race, nor religion, nor heritage, nor wealth. It takes all with equal measure and in death we are all connected and made equals.

Good read, although at times there was too much info. I'm all for a great story, but do not bore me with information that, in my opinion, could have been left out.

I have found myself increasingly drawn to slave stories and movies (“The Butler” and especially “12 Years a Slave”) as well as non-fiction about sugar cane plantations in the West Indies. Finally citizens of this United States can, if they wish, confront more realistically just how horrific slavery was as well as the continued impact on so many of our black citizens.
Although there are flaws in this novel such as clichés that the characters speaking in the nineteenth century would never have used—“To hell with that…” “I know who gets the last laugh” among several others—this is a novel that is truly a literary masterpiece.
For a few dozen pages I had difficulties with the first person narrators because I didn’t believe, for example, that Wash would have had the language ability to narrate as he does. However, the more I read, the more I became aware of just how skillfully Margaret Wrinkle in her debut novel provide for verisimilitude, mainly through Wash’s mother, Mena, who came to the United States on a slave ship, nearly dying from a fall over board.
Before telling a little about the story, I would like to suggest that the author has created some rich symbols beginning with the title—the name of the central character—who was actually named Washington by his owner. However, Mena saw her son only as Wash, the child she carried as she was daily awash in the sea, on an island with her master—he is not the father—Richardson who has gone there to rid himself, for the moment, of all the reminders of what he did in becoming a slave owner. Here is a piece of Wash’s adult narrative from the novel to demonstrate what I am saying: “Wash. Every time she said it, she heard waves and saw water sheeting off men. Sweeping me clean.”
It is a novel of redemption. And rich in beautiful language, very poetic at times. When I read in a one-star review that an entire book club rejected this novel, all I could think of was this: they probably read Fanny Flagg-type novels, her last one being the antithesis of “Wash.”
Richardson, a young idealist, fought in the American Revolution, was captured along with Thompson by the British and held as a prisoner. He was an idealist who wanted the United States not to embrace slavery. However, as is all too often the case, the young idealist becomes the pragmatist. And as such he does become a slave owner only to discover as he ages that he wants to divest himself of what he has built and decides that he will divest most of it to his offspring. In a strange turn of events, he had purchased Mena, fresh off the slave ship, at a slave auction, not knowing she was pregnant. She is an amazing mother, unaware of just how her son would be used.
And this is so interesting to me: well-endowed Wash would become literally a stud service. In other words, Richardson gets paid a little something every time Wash is able to impregnate a slave woman. Although shamanic Mena is no longer alive, Wash become friends with a potent healer named Pallas who often is a midwife.
And therein lies the keys to what becomes a power struggle with these three characters.
It is a novel that is very lyrical and highly troublesome in that the author exposes in raw details the horrors of slavery. At one point Richardson, who was a magistrate (judge), sentences a slave woman to hang after she stabs to death her master and mistress whose children come upon the scene and are then comforted by this slave woman who was far more the mother to them than the one dead on the floor. And the result of his judgment—it would have been the only one possible back then, of course—helps to build the plot line of this amazing novel.

Well researched. Insightful. Sensitive to so many nuanced perspectives. Poetic. Transporting. Should be required reading.

Very respectful approach to this era in American history. The very end of the book was a slight disappointment, however.

This is an awesome book! I highly recommend it!

Difficult subject matter but so well written and research that on could not put down the book. This is a book club selection and I look forward to the discussion.

I liked the book. It is very well written. We need to remember, however, that it is just a fictitious story. The author admits that it is not true in interviews when she admits that she conceived of the idea of the story based upon a "rumour" that she has an ancestor who bred slaves. The author has since childhood been very fond of horses and the breeding of horses. I suspect that her lifelong interest in horses is probably the origin (at least in part) of the idea for the story. While I have no doubt that human beings will do anything for profit, as a practical matter, using a male slave for breeding purposes while travelling around the country would not seem to be very practical. While women have been known to be impregnated by males as a result of limited sexual intercourse, it is statistically somewhat rare. The human female has a limited window of opportunity to be impregnated each month. The use of a human male to breed with a human female would probably require that the male spend considerable time living with the female. I doubt that a buyer would want to pay money unless he was certain of receiving product in the form of a child. It would make more sense for the slave owner to purchase attractive female slaves and then offer them to wealthy men for the purpose of sex and then selling the children downstream. This would be a much more realistic and profitable business model. I imagine that this practice was somewhat common at the time. In any event, it is a good book, and I recommend it.

Its crazy how there was slaves back in the day, it troubles me how humans were able to live like that. How can one human be fine with owning another? it just doesn't sit right with my head and It doesn't sit right with most people today.