The Water Dancer

“Bored whites were barbarian whites. While they played at aristocrats, we were their well-appointed and stoic attendants. But when they tired of dignity, the bottom fell out. New games were anointed and we were but pieces on the board. It was terrifying. There was no limit to what they might do at this end of the tether, nor what my father would allow them to do.”

Hiram points out one of the ironies of slaveholding society: While whites believe their society is the height of aristocracy and gentility, their absolute power over enslaved people makes them immoral and dangerous. This representation of slave masters and the enslaved inverts common representations of the masters as benevolent and slaves as so lacking in civilization that they require mastery.

“I tried to remember the Street and Thena’s admonition, They ain’t your family. But seeing the estate as I now did […] I began, in my quiet moments, to imagine myself in their ranks. And there was my father, who would pull me aside and tell me of our lineage stretching back through his father, John Walker, back through the progenitor, Archibald Walker, who walked here with a mule, two horses, his wife, Judith, two young boys, and ten tasking men. Would tell me these stories as if granting in these asides a teasing share of my inheritance.” 

Hiram’s earliest aspirations are to become part of his white Walker family and be recognized by his father as one of them. These aspirations show the degree to which the young Hiram fails to recognize the role of slavery in the story of the Walker legacy. Later in the novel, as he matures, this idea about the Walkers falls by the wayside.

“[M]asters could not bring water to boil, harness a horse, nor strap their own drawers without us. We were better than them—we had to be. Sloth was literal death for us, while for them it was the whole ambition of their lives. It occurred to me then that even my own intelligence was unexceptional, for you could not set eyes anywhere on Lockless and not see the genius in its makers.” 

Hiram’s education in the reality of slaveholding society begins as soon as he comes into closer contact with whites and blacks forced to serve whites directly. Again, this representation of masters as dependent and weak and the enslaved as geniuses is an inversion of the representation of each group. This representation undercuts white supremacist arguments on the superiority of whites and the inferiority of blacks.

“It was not just that I would never be heir to even one inch of Lockless. And it was more than knowing I would never be a subscriber to the fruit of my own labor. It was also that my own natural wants must forever be bottled up, that I must live in fear of those wants, so that more than I must live in fear of the Quality, I must necessarily live in fear of myself.” 

At 19, Hiram finally comes to a true understanding of the reality of his status as a slave. This quote captures an epiphany during which Hiram finally learns that being a slave to the Walkers will never allow him to be his authentic self. Like most enslaved people, he will always be forced to wear a mask to survive.

“[E]ven now, having done the thing, I cannot say I truly understand the entirety of Conduction, save this essential thing—you have to remember.” 

Coates’ choice to make the ability to Conduct dependent on memory reflects a larger theme in the novel—that claiming one’s power and identity as an African American requires connecting to one’s cultural memory and African ancestry.

“I think now that this is how the running so often begins, that it is settled upon in that moment you understand the great depth of your peril. For it is not simply by slavery that you are captured, but by a kind of fraud, which paints its executors as guardians at the gate, staving off African savagery, when it is they themselves who are savages, who are Mordred, who are the Dragon, in Camelot’s clothes. And at that moment of revelation, of understanding, running is not a thought, not even as a dream, but a need, no different than the need to flee a burning house.”

In referencing important myths and stories from Western culture in Hiram’s explanation of his decision to flee from slavery, Coates is writing the story of slavery and white supremacy in terms designed to help the reader recognize the bravery inherent in the fugitive slave and the evil inherent in white supremacy. The impact of this stark contrast is to force the reader to recognize the hero in the fugitive slave.

“Ain’t no freedom for a woman in trading a white man for a colored.” 

Sophia is explaining in this quote why she refuses to accept Hiram’s attempts to assert masculine privilege in claiming her as his own. Her statement highlights the multiple oppressions African American women faced as both women and slaves in a slaveholding, patriarchal society. Sophia’s story is one of several that Coates uses to center the voices of enslaved women in his novel.

“I would fall into myself during these ‘examinations,’ because I quickly learned that the only way to survive such invasion was to dream, to let my soul fly from my body, fly back to Lockless and another time, when I called out the work songs—'Be back, Gina, with my heart and my song’—or stood before Alice Caulley, watching her gleam as I recited her history, or sat under the gazebo, passing a jug of ale and nursing all my wants and desires. But it was only a dream. And the fact was I was there in the awful now, being handled by men who gloried in their power to reduce a man to meat.”

As he is brutally and invasively examined by potential purchasers, Hiram disassociates from his body, a common response to trauma that threatens the life or bodily integrity of a person. This scene reflects the dehumanizing aspects of slavery, including the objectification of black bodies as property.

“I was forced to confess the limits of my operation. I was running, when what I needed was to fly. Not just in my mind, but in this world. I needed to lift up away from these low whites, as I lifted away from Maynard and the river. But how? What was that power that could pull a man out of the depths? That could pull a boy out of the stables and into the loft? I began to reconstruct events.” 

Hiram’s focus on reconstructing his memories is the first step in gaining control over Conduction. The centrality of memory to gaining control over Conduction shows the importance of the past to personal and cultural identity. Hiram can only become who he needs to be by remembering his past.

“You will forgive me for not saying much about my fellow agents. Those who are mentioned in this volume are either alive and have tendered their permission, or have gone off to that final journey to meet with the Grand Discerner of Souls. We are not yet past a time when scores are settled and vengeances sought, so many of us must, even in this time, remain underground.” 

In the traditional slave narratives upon which the novel is partially based, narrators frequently refuse full disclosure of facts that might harm helpers who supported the narrators’ flight to freedom. Such passages point out the tension between the autobiographical convention of telling a full and truthful about the narrator and the commitment to protect others in the slave community. Coates’ references to such secrets is a hallmark of the neo-slave narrative.

“‘The hell I care about right?’ she said. ‘Hell I care about you or your men? You know what they did to us back there. You done forgot? You don’t remember what they do to the girls down here? And once they do it, they got you. They catch you with the babies, tie you to the place by your own blood and all, until you got too much to let go of to go. Well, I got as much right to run as Parnel. Much right as you or anyone.’” 

Lucy, one of several fugitive slave women, explicitly articulates the gendered oppression and violence that slave women face when compared to men. Inclusion of her argument for her right to flee is one of several ways that Coates uses his neo-slave narrative to tell a story that is more attentive to women’s stories of slavery when compared to the original slave narratives.

“It occurred to me that an examination of the Task revealed not just those evils particular to Virginia, to my old world, but the great need for a new one entirely. Slavery was the root of all struggle. For it was said that the factories enslaved the hands of children, and that child-bearing enslaved the bodies of women, and that rum enslaved the souls of men. In that moment I understood, from that whirlwind of ideas, that this secret war was waged against something more than the Taskmasters of Virginia, that we sought not merely to improve the world, but to remake it.” 

Hiram begins to recognize the structural relationship between multiple forms of oppression when he attends an abolitionist convention. These forms of oppression are rooted in capitalism, specifically the treatment of all people as bodies that produce profit. The quote also captures the relationship between abolition and a wave of reformist movements in the 19th-century Unites States that is the setting for the novel.

“‘We forgot nothing, you and I,’ Harriet said. ‘To forget is to truly slave. To forget is to die.’” 

This quote highlights how forgetting trauma, no matter how painful, prevents the enslaved from gaining the resilience they need to survive.

“‘To remember, friend,’ she said. ‘For memory is the chariot, and memory is the way, and memory is bridge from the curse of slavery to the boon of freedom.’” 

Tubman’s second injunction highlights the importance of memory to the functioning of Conduction. This piece of information is an important moment of worldbuilding in the novel: Coates explains here how the power works.

“The jump is done by the power of the story. It pulls from our particular histories, from all of our loves and all of our losses. All of that feeling is called up, and on the strength of our remembrances, we are moved.” 

The additional detail here about how Conduction works centers the power of storytelling in the novel. While “we are moved” might in some instances refer to the ability of stories to help listeners remember the feelings they have suppressed as a result of trauma, in Coates’ world, the movement is a literal one.

“Ain’t no pure, Robert. Ain’t no clean.” 

Hiram’s admonishment of Robert about his desire for purity in his relationship with Mary reflects his efforts to show how the system of slavery suspends the ability for the enslaved to hold to morally rigid notions of right, wrong, and sexual purity. This acknowledgement of moral complexity lightens the load of enslaved women, who were frequently held to standards of sexual purity that failed to acknowledge widespread sexual exploitation; Coates’ attention to this issue is one of the ways in which he centers the experiences of enslaved women.

“I tell you I was, by then, mortgaged to the Underground. All that I knew of true humanity, of allegiance and honor, I had learned in that last year. I believed in the world of Kessiah and Harriet and Raymond and Otha and Mars. Still, the boy in me had not died. I was what I was and could no more choose my family, even a family denied me, than I could choose a country that denies us all the same.” 

This quote captures the impact of the Underground on Hiram’s identity and his continued efforts to come to terms with the part of his identity that is tied to being a Walker.

“I felt a great rage, not simply because I knew that they had been taken but because I knew how they had been taken, how they had been parted from each other, how I was born and made by this great parting. Better than before, I understood the whole dimensions of this crime, the entirety of the theft, the small moments, the tenderness, the quarrels and corrections, all stolen, so that men such as my father might live as gods.” 

The description of slavery as theft revises the notion of slavery as a natural division between the strong and the weak; slavery is instead an explicit crime against enslaved people. The reference to the impact of that theft on relationships and love shows that this theft has ongoing psychological impacts on the enslaved. Even more painful for Hiram is that the traumatic act of being enslaved is the foundation for his identity. Hiram’s struggle—and that of enslaved people in general—is to find a way to come to terms with the foundation of one’s identity and culture being an act of violence.

“Caroline was, by my estimation, perhaps four months old, which meant that when I ran with Sophia, she was already carrying the baby. And knowing her intellect and independence, and thinking on all our conversations, I understood that she was not simply with child when we ran, but likely ran with me because she was with child.” 

Hiram’s recognition that Sophia has her own secrets gives him pause because he finally realizes the extent to which her experiences and calculations as an enslaved woman are quite different from the ones he has as an enslaved man.

“But we must tell our stories, and not be ensnared by them.” 

Hiram’s epiphany in this moment reflects an understanding that telling one’s story has the capacity to be empowering and freeing as long one as one exercises control over those stories; the alternative to being a creator of one’s story is being trapped in the trauma of those stories and thus never able to move forward.

“I could not see the genius of it, not at the time, for we were, even if united in our goal, too much committed to opposing routes. The tasking men were people to me, not weapons, nor cargo, but people with lives and stories and lineage, all of which I remembered, and the longer I served on the Underground, this sense did not diminish but increased.” 

This passage is Hiram’s articulation of the difference between the perspective of white abolitionists and black abolitionists. The more intimate, personal connection of black members of the Underground makes them more attentive to the impact of slavery on individuals. Despite their good intentions, white abolitionists still at times fail to recognize the individual humanity of the enslaved.

“So the chief told his people to walk out into the water, to sing and dance as they walked, that the water-goddess brought ’em here, and the water-goddess would take ’em back home. And when we dance as we do, with the water balanced on our head, we are giving praise to them who danced on the waves. We have flipped it, you see? As we must do all things, make a way out of what is given.” 

Sophia explains the origins of water-dancing, one of several forms of performance and art by which African Americans maintain connections to Africa and tell a story about slavery that emphasizes African Americans’ enduring love of freedom.

“‘For my mother,’ I said. ‘For all the so many mothers taken over this bridge from which there can be no return.’ And then I looked at Thena, and I saw now she was softly illuminated in blue light emanating from the necklace of shells. ‘For all the mothers who have remained,’ I said, with one hand clasping hers and the other on her cheek. ‘Who carry on in the name of those who do not return.’” 

Hiram comes into his power fully by telling a story about enslaved women, most particularly mothers who lost their children. Coates’ decision to make these women’s stories central to Conduction allows him to represent that slavery more fully. Such moments reflect the importance of revision in the neo-slave narrative genre.