Middle Passage

The Republic is the central symbol of the novel. Rutherford describes the ship as a floating wreck that is constantly coming apart at the seams and thus has to be constructed as it is underway on the Atlantic. The physical structure represents the United States, a republic that also must be constantly remade in order for its people and institutions to survive.

The Republic is also a slaver backed by extremely affluent investors who have no qualms about profiting from exploitation and the destruction of other cultures. This aspect of the ship’s purpose highlights the threat that slavery and rule by the rich pose to the survival of the United States. The open mutiny and deadly conflict among the factions aboard the ship represent civil war. In the case of the United States, military and civilian leadership managed to steer the country back on course, but the Republic lacks such people and is thus destroyed.

Rutherford begins his life as a slave, a piece of property. Despite achieving freedom when his master emancipates him, Rutherford still faces multiple constraints that impede his ability to be free. His debt, accrued with merchants or through gambling, represents the ongoing impact of slavery, since Rutherford is unable to earn a decent living as a black man in the highly stratified society of New Orleans.

Rutherford’s thievery is a slightly more complicated response to his status as an ex-slave. Taking from the rich is Rutherford’s ongoing rebellion against an economic order that allows slavery; stealing thus represents Rutherford’s rejection of the values of monied interests. 

A ship’s logbook is designed to be a true record of the voyage of a ship, including important events, weather, transactions, and disciplinary actions. In the novel, Falcon—as captain—initially keeps the logbook. The early logbook represents Falcon’s authority over the ship.

Just before he kills himself, Falcon tasks Rutherford with keeping the logbook and faithfully recording subsequent events. Rutherford, a man with no authority, revises the logbook to include the presence of the Allmuseri and to document the immoral and illegal actions of Falcon and his investors. The logbook comes to symbolize history from below, one that represents the experience of oppressed people. Rutherford’s assumption of the duty of keeping the logbook allows him to secure the freedom of the Allmuseri survivors, Isadora, and himself, implying that being able to control the historical narrative is required for self-determination.

Falcon is a smuggler turned privateer and ship’s captain, and he uses his travels to collect both salable goods and important cultural artifacts. His seizure of the Allmuseri god is audacious, but it continues a pattern of theft of cultures. This seizure of loot from cultures around the world marks him the novel’s central representation of imperialism and colonialism and the way these two political and economic systems are built upon Western exploitation of other cultures. 

The Allmuseri are the only people in the novel who can properly be called slaves, so using slavery as a representation of a lack of freedom for non-slave characters would certainly be problematic. Nevertheless, Johnson takes pains in the novel to draw parallels between slavery and the constraints of common sailors like Squibb and even an officer such as Falcon. These constraints are primarily economic and based on contracts. The sailors aboard the ship can be whipped, confined, or even killed for breaking their contracts or defying the captain. Falcon is unable to accept the offer to be marooned instead of killed because of the large return on investment he guaranteed to the investors for the voyage.