There he saw the stars and exchanged stares with the moon, but he could see very little of the land, which was just as well because he was gazing at the shore of an island that, three hundred years ago, had struck slaves blind the moment they saw it.
Before Chapter One commences, there is a Foreword that describes a sailor jumping over the side of a ship and boarding a small ship after being driven out to sea by the current. The section ends with the sailor emerging from the closet in which he has been hiding up on deck, relieved that the smaller ship has been charting a course away from the trouble he faces back home. The section ends on this rather ominous and cryptic note, however, creating an aura of mystery about just what this island really is and what it entails for the fugitive seaman.
“In my closet. In my closet.”
Margaret is given to strange lapses in awareness, plunging into a kind of trancelike state in which she performs actions as if lost in a haze of unconsciousness. Valerian is a bit less than kind and more than cruel toward this behavior and during a dinner his badgering results Margaret leaving the room. Later, everyone hears her piercing screams and though mostly stuttering babble, she finally gains control enough to speak these lines which explain her condition. In that closet (not the one from the boat) is a strange black man. Which makes the situation all more bizarre when Valerian, instead of grabbing him before he can feel, calmly invites him to sit down and share a drink with him.
He wanted her in that room with him giving him the balance he was losing, the ballast and counterweight to the stone of sorrow New York City had given him.
The writing style in this novel is heavy with figurative language. Morrison tosses metaphor and similes around like a knife throwing act in the circus. The trick is not only that she lands them exactly where aimed, but in the dramatic fashion in which she throws them. Extravagantly constructed or simple and to the point, Morrison’s metaphors are always interesting and reveal a mind that refuses to be limited to the expectations of others.
An innocent man is a sin before God. Inhuman and therefore unworthy. No man should live without absorbing the sins of his kind, the foul air of his innocence, even if it did wilt rows of angel trumpets and cause them to fall from their vines.
The author climbs inside the head of a guilt-stricken Valerian after he finally learns the truth about what has caused Margaret’s strange condition. His cruelty toward her lapses in consciousness has been stimulated by the suspicion that it was caused by drink, but when he finally is confronted with the horrible truth it is not revulsion toward her that is stimulated so much as self-revulsion at himself for not really wanting bad enough to know the truth. He had become satisfied with the idea that not knowing would be better than knowing. With knowledge comes fear and the inconvenience to life that such an emotion motivates. But such denial has a way of sneaking up on you given enough time.
