The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales

“Oh, mercy, don’t do that! […] Whatever you do with me, don’t dare throw me in those thorny briars!”

Doc Rabbit uses hyperbole (exaggerated, overdramatic language) to make Bruh Fox think he doesn’t want to go in the briars (he does). The quote is an example of dialogue—it’s a conversation between Doc Rabbit and Doc Fox, and many of the folktales use dialogue so the characters, not the narrator, can propel the plot and conflict.

“The cowhide beat and beat. It beat everybody—it beat the king, too.”

In two sentences, the word “beat” appears four times. Hamilton repeats the word to highlight the violence of the cowhide. It’s constantly on the attack and has no problem Confronting Power, as it even assaults the king.

“Long time, nothin here but animal and bird and the Indian.”

The first sentence of the tale uses the literary device allusion—it references how the Americas were before Europeans arrived and named the land America. The quote paints a tranquil picture of animals and Indigenous people and foreshadows (previews) the horrors that the colonists and, later, the United States will bring to the land.

“Sword go on and cut down everythin Rabbit have. It don’t leave nothin, not one leaf cabbage.”

The quote features personification, as a sword becomes Sword. It turns into a human that destroys Rabbit’s crops, and Hamilton illustrates the destruction with concise imagery—the reader can see that there’s not one leaf of cabbage left.

“[T]hey wears berry white skins all over from they heads to they tails, for true.”

The imagery of the white-skinned alligators uses allusion and, in one reading, connects the predatory alligators to the oppressive white enslavers. The angle can make the reader lose sympathy for them when they meet Trouble, and Trouble burns their skin.

“Wolf was all alone out there. All alone and awful hungry. No food. Wolf started up crying.”

Hamilton uses imagery to create a picture of the isolated Wolf—he has no community. She uses repetition—“all” and “alone”—to emphasize his alienation. To give the sentences melody, she uses alliteration. That is, she strings together words starting with the same letter, “A.”

“As himself, Anton married the girl. He became king of the inhabitants of the moon. And the beautiful girl of the tower became queen.”

While many of the tales confront power, in this tale, the main characters become powerful—they turn into the king and queen. Not only does Anton turn into four different creatures, but he also becomes royalty.

“Oh, no, dear wolf, what occasion have I to move?”

Hamilton uses dialogue to show how Little Daughter tricks the wolf. She puts them in conversation, with Little Daughter repeating her claim that she has no reason to get away from the wolf. Little Daughter uses her intelligence and gets back behind the gate.

“Manuel, do not go! […] Twenty-five men have died because they could not guess the riddle of the princess. Nobody escapes.”

Hamilton uses dialogue to show that Manuel’s mom doesn’t want him to go on his adventure. The exclamation point reinforces her worry and helps explain why she made him poison cakes. She’d rather kill her son than have the prince chop off his head. The former is more humane.

“Well, you had your chance. […] You et the last piece of it for your dinner today.”

Papa John tells his son, Jake, that he just ate the turnip, giving the story an ironic ending. That is, the story concludes with a twist. It upends Jake’s expectations. He doesn’t think he’ll get to eat the turnip, but he just did.

“See how it is? Every bad thing you do to me turns out good. You killed my horse and it turned out good. You killed my grandmother and it turned out good again.”

Through dialogue, Little John explains the irony of the situation to Big John. Killing isn’t good, but in a twist, the deaths work in Little John’s favor. Little John repeats “good” twice to make sure Big John understands.

“Hairy Man, [...] you wouldn’t do that. That’s too mean, even for you.”

Wiley’s mom has ironic dialogue as she tells the Hairy Man that he won’t wreck her cow and cotton. In a twist, the villainous Hairy Man isn’t that bad—even he has a conscience. As the universe represents possibility, it becomes possible for evil characters to restrain their maliciousness.

“The Devil’s daughter comes out there right by where he’s workin. She feels sorry for him. He’s way behind. He’ll never make two days, let alone half a day.”

John can’t clear the land in half a day, so the Devil’s daughter has to do it for him. John turns into the sidekick or secondary character, and the daughter ascends to the main character. Without her work, the Devil kills John.

“This fellow, like he had no sense, he cooked the great, big, long tail.”

Using blunt diction, the narrator explicitly summons the theme of Intelligence Versus Thick-Headedness. The unnamed man qualifies as the latter—he lacks “sense” and cooks and eats the tail, which the narrator illustrates through imagery and hyperbole.

“His family went stone broke with no money nowhere hidden. And that made Little Eight John giggle and grin.”

Hamilton uses juxtaposition to spotlight the cruelty of Little Eight John. She compares his family’s loss of money to his glee at causing the financial ruin, allowing the reader to see his sinister character. The quote features repetition with “no” and “nowhere,” and it also includes alliteration—“giggle and grin.”

“When the last week come, Jack had drunk so much, he was lyin in bed all the time, seein things that were not there.”

Due to alcoholism, Jack is not in a good place, and the imagery reinforces his tumultuous condition. He’s stuck in bed with little sense of reality. His predicament arguably makes him less of a villain and antagonist and more of an antihero.

“As quick as a crack of the fire, a long shadow fell over John.”

Alliteration can also involve putting words with similar sounds near one another. Hamilton pairs “quick” with “crack” to create the sudden appearance of the large cat. The snappy sounds add to the tense atmosphere, developing the tone of the story.

“So I never saw them, couldn’t recognize them, and couldn’t describe them.”

The repetition of “couldn’t” reinforces the narrator’s inability to identify the enslaved people he helps free. He can’t create a picture of them, and the lack of a picture demonstrates his faith and heroism—he doesn’t need to see them to help them. The anonymity also serves a practical purpose—if the narrator can’t see the people, he can’t identify them if he’s caught.

“Warton threw back his head and laughed. It was a long, loud bellow. He had laughed before he thought.”

Imagery and alliteration show how Nehemiah’s quip makes Warton laugh. He doesn’t laugh lightly but intensely—it’s “a long, loud bellow.” As he laughs before thinking about the consequences, Warton exposes his thick-headedness.

“Now Jim was a dreamer, but he was a thinker, too.”

As a dreamer, Jim sees the world as a symbol of possibility. As a thinker, Jim outwits the enslavers and gains his freedom. The juxtaposition connects imagination to intelligence.

“Now here it is. Long time ago, there was a slave and a slaveowner. They got along. They liked to joke back and forth sometimes.”

The image of the enslaved person and the enslaver kidding around with each other reveals another aspect of slavery. Not all enslavers abused and tortured the people they owned—some maintained cordial and playful relationships. Regardless of the relationship, it’s still slavery.

“See, John was a prophet and Mas Tom was a whole bunch richer.”

This is the one story in Part 4 where an enslaved person doesn't gain liberty. Instead, John’s resourcefulness helps his enslaver. The irony is that John isn’t a prophet, but Tom does get more money. Then again, John’s perceptions do indirectly lead to kinder treatment.

“Then, many of the people were captured for Slavery. The ones that could fly shed their wings.”

The quote alludes to the history of slavery, with slave traders, sometimes working with African rulers, apprehending people and putting them on ships, where the conditions were ghastly, to the Americas. Going from a free person to an enslaved person changes their identity—the wings disappear.