Underground To Canada

These chapters establish the significance of The Bonds of Friendship. By describing how Liza and Julilly offer each other emotional and practical support, Smucker shows how friendship offers relief from the hardships of their enslavement. Liza and Julilly help each other endure the rigors of life as enslaved people on the Riley plantation. Liza helps Julilly understand the daily tasks and rhythm of life for the field workers, and Julilly helps Liza pick enough cotton to avoid punishment. Smucker continues to characterize Julilly as a compassionate and sensitive person, qualities that endear her to her new friend, Liza.

Julilly is sensitive to Liza’s predicament and tries to protect her from Sims: “She avoided looking at him. When he came near her she worked steadily and tried to overshadow Liza, who crouched beneath her, pulling cotton from the lower branches” (40). By describing Liza’s appreciation of Julilly’s gestures, Smucker shows the deepening bond between the two girls. She writes, “Her hand reached out in the dark and touched Julilly. ‘You is a friend,’ the crippled girl whispered; ‘no one else ever picked the high cotton that my poor ol’ back won’t stretch to.’ Julilly felt a strong urge to protect this beaten, crippled girl who had once tried to run away” (41). Exhausted from her workday and coping with her disability, Liza is grateful to Julilly for feeding her, saying, “‘Without you, Julilly’—Liza raised her tired head where she sat resting against the trunk of a thick oak tree—‘I’d starve to death’”(50).

The girls’ friendship connects with another theme, the Resilience of the Human Spirit. By providing a window into Julilly’s thoughts, the author explores different ways enslaved people adapted and survived. For instance, Julilly feels that white men are more expressive, but Black men hide their feelings to stay safe:

Julilly had learned a long time ago from Mammy Sally that it was easy to know the thoughts of a white man by the look in his eyes. A black man learned to keep his thoughts inside his head and pull the shades down over his eyes so the white man couldn’t see inside (46).

Smucker’s characters also cling to different sources of inspiration to retain their sense of hope and identity. For example, Liza fondly remembers her father’s teachings, which make her feel empowered and capable enough to attempt escape. She tells Julilly, “‘I am afraid, and I am not afraid.’ Liza’s bony fingers grasped Julilly’s arm. ‘Like my daddy said to me, ‘Liza, in the eyes of the Lord, you is somebody mighty important […] I’m scrawny, Julilly, but I’m tough’” (52).

These passages also demonstrate the importance of solidarity and communication. By openly discussing what they know about Canada and options for escape, Julilly and the other girls on the Riley plantation show their trust in each other and desire to help one another. Smucker describes this solidarity and information sharing:

That night in the long slave cabin, all the girls whispered about Canada and Mr. Ross. Most of them knew about the place. Word of it had crept along the plantation “grapevines” in the places where they came from—in Virginia and North Carolina. They shared what they had heard (50).

Another important source of information for Julilly is Lester since, as one of Mr. Ross’s guides, he is more informed about the strange, new Canadian on the plantation. Smucker paints Lester as a trusted friend: “Julilly knew she must talk with Lester soon. Sometimes on Sundays she met him in the yard of the slave quarters […] Once she told him what Mammy Sally said about Canada. He had listened hard then” (48). These secret communications show the solidarity between these characters as they rely on each other for practical information and emotional support.

In these passages Smucker continues to create imagery about her characters and the landscape. She juxtaposes the natural beauty and abundance of the Mississippi landscape with the meager, dilapidated conditions Julilly and the other slaves endure. The Riley plantation has “green fields dotted with cotton plants,” “rich, black soil” and “fresh, white blossoms” (32). Julilly is amazed by the farm’s old oak trees and their “silent cloud-like drapes of swaying grey moss” (32). However, in sharp contrast to this idyllic scene, Smucker paints a frightening picture of the enslaved people’s section of the plantation. Julilly and her peers live in “low and ugly” huts whose “doors sagged on broken hinges” (34). Along with the other girls, Julilly sleeps in a dirty cabin with “a hard dirt floor” and only “filthy rags” for bedding (35). Smucker connects the impoverishment of the slave quarters with their failing health, writing, “The children, with legs scrawny as chicken legs, sat scratching in the dust with sticks and feathers. They had caved-in cheeks that sucked the smiles off their tiny faces” (34). She describes the plantation’s adult slaves as “thin and frail as shadows” (38).