August Wilson's Century Cycle -- Gem of the Ocean

 

August Wilson seems to have had a lot on his mind when he wrote Gem of the Ocean -- history, religion, folkways, maybe even politics, but most assuredly America's tradition of racial oppression and exploitation. Maybe that's why his major characters have such enormous speaking parts ... lots and lots of words, lots and lots of stories. Is it too much?

In Act One, Aunt Ester describes a dream in which Solly was leading a group of men in a ship across the water but the ship capsized and the men were lost. While this image connects with Solly's past as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, it also, because of the fate of the passengers, suggests to me a connection with the mythological figure of Charon, who conducted souls into the netherworld. It is curious that Aunt Ester asks to be taken back across the water. Why? Solly, of course, is determined to get his sister out of Alabama where white folks "have gone crazy." A fateful decision that maybe Ester foresaw.

Solly: "What good is freedom if you can't do nothing with it? I seen many a man die for freedom but he didn't know what he was getting. If he had known he might have thought twice about it." (Act One, Scene Two). August Wilson does not make it easy. His characters are complex and seemingly conflicted. Solly's determination to free his sister from a crushing existence in Alabama seems to suggest life two generations after Emancipation was not significantly better for blacks. Is he suggesting that life in bondage would be preferable to impoverishment?

Wilson describes Black Mary as Aunt Ester's protegee, which to me is an odd description. Ester's wisdom comes from her age (or agelessness). Black Mary is described as a young woman in her 20s, which suggests she did not make the crossing from enslavement to freedom. She seems to be defined most by the house and her relationship to Ester and her brother Caesar, with whom she differs not only in age but in temperament. She also differs from Citizen Barlow in that she's found some piece in loneliness.

"One after the other they come and they go. You can't hold on to none of them. They slip through your hands. They use you up and you can't hold them. They all the time taking till it's gone. They ain't tried to put nothing to it. They ain't got nothing in their hand. They got nothing to add to it." (Act One, Scene Four) Black Mary doesn't seem to be bitter, just resigned to the emptiness.