Position Paper: Middle
Passage
By Rebecca Pitts
When Rutherford Calhoun arrives in New Orleans,
he has been freed from slavery by his master, Reverend Chandler, but
Rutherford is not yet a free man. Before Rutherford can truly be free,
he must confront his past and deal with the abandonment of his father.
It is not until Rutherford stows away onboard the Republic and comes
face to face with the "secret" that Captain Falcon has stolen
from Africa that Rutherford finally faces his past and his deepest
emotions. The "monster" takes the shape of Rutherford’s
father and Rutherford is forced to see into and through his father’s
eyes, irrevocably connecting father and son and allowing Rutherford
to make peace with the voices in his head, one of which is his father’s.
This moment in the novel prepares the reader for the changes that
are revealed in Rutherford soon after; by facing his past, Rutherford
allows himself the freedom to move into the future.
Rutherford and Peter Cringle share their histories
with each other in the few calm moments before they know the Republic
will be torn apart. Trying to communicate his feelings about his father
to the first mate, Rutherford explains: "I don’t even know
who my father is....I have no family traditions to maintain. In a
way, I have no past" (160). Rutherford connects the loss of his
father with the loss of any sense of personal history or familial
ties. When his father left him, Riley Calhoun essentially eradicated
Rutherford’s relationship with his past life, leaving deep wounds
that the narrator does not address until he faces the image of his
father soon after his conversation with Cringle. Rutherford bemoans
his meeting with the monster, for it "had chosen to present itself
to [him] in the form of the one man with whom [he] had bloody, unfinished
business--[his] father" (167).
Rutherford has spent most of his narrative running: running from the
law in New Orleans, running from Papa, running from Isabel. At the
height of the peril at sea, Rutherford is forced to stop running.
When he first sees the form of his father, Rutherford believes that
he is silent because, "to say anything was to fall short of ever
saying enough" (168). Rutherford has obviously been deeply wounded
by his father’s decision to abandon his family, and he feels
that nothing his father could say would make up for the loss that
Rutherford has suffered. By the end of their encounter, however, Rutherford
realizes that his father is and will always be, a part of him, hearing
"a mosaic of voices within voices, each one immanent in the other,
none his but all strangely his....he seemed everywhere, his presence,
and that of countless others, in me as well as in the god’s name:
Rutherford" (171). At the moment he lets go and accepts his father
as part of his past and present, Rutherford finds himself. The movement
from silence to the "mosaic of voices" suggests that a new
song now lends itself to Rutherford’s ears. The confrontation
with the creature/father ultimately allows Rutherford to stop running
in place, for he learns that by embracing his past, he becomes free
to embrace all of himself.