43 pages • 1 hour read
Abeng
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Religion as a Means of Subjugation
Religion is a major theme in the book, mirroring the central role it plays in European and Jamaican cultures. However, the narrator expresses an ambivalent attitude towards Christianity.
On the one hand, religion serves as a source of spiritual succor for poor Jamaicans, especially women. Their faith gives Black women a buffer against the suffering and unhappiness caused by their poverty, mistreatment by men and white people, and continuous struggle to provide for their children and relatives.
On the other hand, combined with the lack of social mobility, the Black population’s attitude that their life is “just a gateway to the life everlasting” and that the only way to escape from reality is to wait for the afterlife makes it difficult for them to strive for or dream about a better existence (10). Their faith, in a way, becomes a self-imposed subjugation and paralyzes any attempts at political activism. Additionally, Christianity has served, historically, as an excuse for the persecution of various groups, such as the Jews. Its militarized version, as preached at the John Knox Church, serves as the moral underpinning of European exploration and expansion: colonizing other peoples is not only profitable, but it is also a sacred duty, as it is the way to spread the Lord’s word to the rest of the world. Thus, Africans physically serve the British in Jamaica, and religion culturally assimilates them.
Slavery and Dehumanization
The question of who is considered human and who is sub-human is closely related to issues of race, religion, and slavery. According to the narrator, in the Western worldview, anyone who is not white or Christian is considered “other” and, thus, inferior. Beginning with Christopher Columbus’s voyages, Europeans imagine people in other parts of the world as monstrous or bestial: “dog-headed beings with human torsos. Winged people who could not fly. Beings with one foot growing out of the tops of their heads” (78). These fantasies result in a mentality that dismisses anyone who is not white or Christian as flawed and, therefore, destined to suffer. The Holocaust and slavery are examples of such an inescapable fate of misfortune. Jews are not Christian, while Africans are not white, thus, both groups are not quite human and pre-destined to a life of suffering.
The conviction that Black people are not quite human or a less advanced type of humans is at the foundation of racism, which, in turn, shapes the institutionalization and industrialization of slavery. In the Christian worldview, it is wrong to treat fellow humans uncharitably, so it becomes necessary to excuse the cruelty of enslavement by relegating Africans to the category of “inhuman”—something that is not of equal standing and that can be exploited. The process of dehumanization is facilitated and supported by various means, such as skin color or hair texture, which collectively have been defined as scientific racism and denounced worldwide after WWII. In Abeng, the enslavement of Africans, the Holocaust, and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are implicitly connected to the white Christian mechanisms of rejecting and dehumanizing groups of people who do not fit in with the West European ideal.
History, Memory, and Selfhood
Memory is one of the key elements of selfhood. Extending this idea to include an entire group, a people’s history becomes the foundation of collective identity. Without memory or history, a person is reduced to the immediacy of the everyday with no understanding of his or her potential for a better life or vision for a different present.
In Abeng, the narrator illustrates the various ways Black Jamaicans are both purposefully and unconsciously deprived of an identity outside of their inferior social position of colored people. On the one hand, their teachers often have a skewed view of the whites’ role on the island and ignore the history that does not pertain directly to the English monarchy. On the other hand, oral history is almost non-existent, as most descendants of former slaves do not like to talk about their difficult childhoods or their traumas, as in the case of Miss Mattie. These silences, from above and from below, result in a complete ignorance of world history and of potential role models for Black people, such as the African kingdoms of Dahomey and Ashanti, or the Jamaican Maroon rebels who fought against the British. Thus, most poor Black people are convinced that their suffering must be somehow justified and simply wait for the afterlife without any hope for a better existence in the present.
The central character, Clare, a representative of her divided society, is purposefully kept ignorant both of the crimes committed by her paternal side of the family and the suffering experienced by her maternal grandmother. She is aware of the skin-color-based power dynamics shaping her social interactions, but without knowledge of the past, Clare has no clear understanding of her own position and role in Jamaican society, and, thus, has neither the skills nor the desire to change things. Despite receiving better treatment because of her mixed heritage, she is as much at the mercy of social norms as Zoe, her dark-skinned friend.
Unlock all 43 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
