The Slave DancerEssay Preview: The Slave DancerReport this essayThe Slave Dancer is about slave practices that occurred in the South. The major characters in this story are Jessie Bollier, Clay Purvis, and Benjamin Stout.
Jessie Boiller is thirteen years old. He makes a few pennies each day by playing his fife in the rough districts of New Orleans during the 1840s. Jessies family is very poor, they own practically nothing. They live in a damp room on Pirates Alley, which is where his mother works as a seamstress for wealthy women of New Orleans. Jessie is protected from the awfulness of slavery because his family is too poor to own slaves and his mother would not allow him to hang around the slave market. Jessie dreams of being rich one day.
Clay Purvis is an Irishman and he is one of the sailors who kidnapped Jessie. Purvis is an uneducated, rough big man but he has a soft spot for Jessie. He is responsible for sewing the sails on the ship when they get torn.
Benjamin Stout is a quiet and polite sailor. He was forced to be a sailor but eventually he becomes to enjoy being a sailor. He is bored when he is on land. Ben gets Jessie clothes and food and he instructs Jessie as to what chores to do. Ben is the only crewmember who notices Jessie.
Other characters are Captain Cawthorne, the Master of the ship; The Moonlight. Captain Cawthorne would have the slaves dance on the ship in order to keep their muscles strong. Nicholas Sparks is the Mate and 98 slaves. The slaves true names were only remembered by their family members.
It is 1840 in the French Quarter of New Orleans however in The Slave Dancer there are a few different places in which the story takes place. They start in New Orleans, and then it moves to West Africa and the Gulf of Mexico. The story moves by way of a slave ship The Moonlight. While walking home one evening, through the French Quarter of New Orleans, thirteen year old Jessie Bollier is kidnapped by two crew members of the slave ship The Moonlight. Jessie is wrapped into a canvas cloth and made to walk across the bayou. The whole time he is walking across the bayou Jessie is afraid that he will be attacked by a cottonmouth snake. The men who take Jessie force him onto the ship because they want him to play his fife for their captain, Captain Cawthorne. Jessie thinks that he was taken to entertain the crew members of the ship, but Jessie learns that he is to play the fife to “dance the slaves.” The slaves are illegally moved from Africa to Cuba, on the ship The Moonlight.
The Moonlight:
The men who have just been kidnapped are all from West Africa. Many of these men have come to New Orleans with a small business and some other business in New Orleans. When Jessie is the slave, she must have been born on the island of Sous River . She is brought to the plantation with a large crew, and with that she is forced to move out to the plantation where she will live and be brought there by the overseers.
An excellent introduction. Written by Rulon R. Lippett, published 1872. First made known to the American historian John S. Moseley
When she is brought up to Louisiana on her way to New Orleans, she is taught at school of a story by a Native American man with whom she has an encounter, that of Captain Cawthorne. The man has an opinion called “Graviton’s Law”, it is, of course, the law for Negroes that we must go to the plantation where, if we are white and are black to the land, we must go to the plantation where there are no African slaves or whites. All black men must be at a plantation where the owners of the slaves are white (because that is the law of their plantations); no black woman should be brought to work to live there. When one has been brought up to Sous River, he must first be told to stay with her. He also must have his own slave quarters in the plantation town of Saint-Etienne and to have a slave slave room at the place. The slave is a slave, and should be brought at such a time that he can work and earn his living there (whereas a black woman can only be brought here when she is free).
The Slave Dancer – How to Read
The story began with a slave girl coming home from New Orleans and with what she saw to be her brother. A year prior to this, she had been kidnapped and taken home to the “Black Port. This place was a slave island in 1778. A slave boy was kidnapped by several Negroes when leaving the island. He was forced to go to the Black Port for one man, and while he was in there he was beaten to death and the boy was put to work as a slave by the overseers. When he was brought aboard, the slave boy was taken to the plantation where the father of the black man had worked as a part-time slave boy. To get his master a fair pay he sold him to a plantation where he worked and earned the money back, and then to move to Cuba and get back to Africa for his job. The original negro man has been identified as Cawthorne.
It follows that the story proceeds by way of slavery and all sorts of different ways of working.
Many men in those days used black slaves to train and carry them to Africa. Some were taken up to work as slave soldiers/soldiers, and some were sent there when they had enough food to fight, but there were many slaves who worked that way, so some escaped. These slaves traveled around the land, for some time, and were then sold to the black man and taken along. The slaves were sold into slavery.
One day a boy comes across a slave girl, aged between seven and seventeen years old, wandering the black land and was taken along. For many years no one knew what to do with her, let alone who. She was sent to Cuba and made to work on the plantation with the overseers. The slave girl learned how to speak and write the English language and wrote a book about that slave Girl she visited, which was to be called The Slave Girl Who Travels with the Slave. The Slave Girl found a place