My fourth grader recently had to submit a book report on a book of at least 150 pages. The assignment required typing out the responses to 10 form questions and drawing an image or scene from the book. I looked at the form and thought, I can do that. I mean, obviously. But I found it to be an interesting exercise. Here is the result. Note that there are some spoilers.
01. Title: The Water Dancer
02. Author: Ta-Nehisi Coates
03. Genre: Historical fiction with fantasy elements
04. Main Characters:
Hiram “Hi” Walker. Hi is a slave working in the fields at Lockless. He is the son of the master of Lockless and a slave woman who was sold away when he was nine. He ultimately becomes a house slave and then a field worker for the Underground.
Howell Walker. Howell is the master of Lockless and Hi’s father. He sees that Hi has talent but cannot see that his white son, Maynard, lacks it. Howell is to be the last master of Lockless.
Thena: Thena is a slave women who takes in Hi after his mother is sold away. Her husband died and her children were sold away from her.
Sofia: Sofia is a slave woman on Lockless who knows how to water dance, like Hi’s mother, and is the particular favorite of a nearby master. Hi falls for her and convinces her to attempt running away.
05. Setting: The Water Dancer takes place primarily in Virginia on a plantation known as Lockless in the mid-1800s. But parts of the story also occur at different places in Virgina and in Pennsylvania.
06. Plot: Hi shifts from a lost little boy without his mother to a field hand and then to a house slave. He is Tasked with serving his father and his white brother and has a magical experience when the carriage he is driving goes off of a bridge. His brother is carried off by the river, but Hi finds himself conducted to safety. Thereafter, he convinces Sofia to run away with him, and they walk into a trap. Hi is obtained, tortured, and trained to be a field agent by members of the Underground. He attempts to hone his powers of Conduction and even learns a bit from Harriet Tubman. He lives in Pennsylvania for a while until duty to the Underground calls him back to Lockless where he finds Sofia, Thena, and information sufficient for the Underground to take control of Lockless.
From Harriet Tubman: “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.” (271)
07. Problem: Hundreds of thousands of people are Tasked, enslaved.
08 Solution: Part of the solution was the Underground. Part of the solution was Hi’s development of his powers of Conduction (and Harriet Tubman’s powers of Conduction, etc.) and of information useful to the Underground. But for many people under slavery, there was no solution. Mothers and fathers and children were sold away from each other, their labor used to benefit their owners and never themselves.
09. Author’s Purpose: I think the author’s purpose was to illustrate just how barbaric slavery was both on a large scale and for each individual. As Hi observes:
“It is hard to convey this now, for it was another time replete with its own rituals, choreography, and manners among the classes and subclasses of Quality, Tasked, and Low. There were things you said and did not, and what you did marked your place in the ranks. The Quality, for instance, did not inquire on the inner workings of their “people.” They knew our names and they knew our parents. But they did not knowus, because not knowing was essential to their power. To sell a child right from under his mother, you must know that mother only in the thinnest way possible.” (83)
10. Recommendation: I would recommend this book to a friend with some caveats. Coates is a powerful writer, particularly about racism. And I therefore found this book to be the most powerful when it was commentating on the power structures that surrounded slavery. But had large sections that lagged, and the use of magical realism seemed unnecessary to the plot. Still, I liked the characters, and the commentary on slavery, as an institution and a daily reality, was insightful and harrowing.
Picture: I played with watercolors and imagined the blues and greens of Conduction meeting.
Textual Play 