Song Yet Sung, Research Paper Example

In James McBride’s novel Song yet Sung, two female characters play central roles in the narrative: Liz Spocott and Patty Cannon. While at first glance, these characters are diametrically opposed – Spocott’s is a black slave, and Cannon is a white woman selling slaves and captured freed blacks to southern plantations – Macbride incorporates a certain affinity or symmetry to both leads. Both are ultimately strong, individual female characters. However, they are separated by a radical ethical difference: Cannon utilizes her autonomy and self-will with a moral blindness that suggests her own selfishness, whereas Spocott’s strength and creativity is used for the greater ethical position of freedom. In the following essay, we shall examine both characters in the play, comparing and contrasting Macbride’s portrayal of the female protagonists and antagonists.

The character of Spocott undergoes an archetypical journey in the search of freedom. As a slave, she escapes from Cannon’s imprisonment and begins her flight. This narrative account is supplemented, however, by Macbride’s crucial addition to the biography of Spocott’s life: she had been struck in the head by musket shell. This event is utilized by Macbride to develop a visionary, prophetic quality to Spocott. Spocott has clear apparitions about the future, which the contemporary reader is able to easily deduce are allusions to contemporary modern American society. Yet these visions are not merely presented by Spocott in the form of a tale. The dreams demonstrate an ethical commitment, as Spocott is concerned particularly with the future of blacks, those descendents of slaves: the question at the heart of Spocott’s visions asks if freedom has really been achieved. Spocott’s approach to these dreams would seem to answer this question in the negative. In this regard, we can understand that Spocott is primarily an ethical character. Furthermore, she is not merely the representation of an idealized ethical system, but is portrayed as a radical thinker of ethics. For example, Spocott’s struggle for freedom can be clearly interpreted as embodying Macbride’s own ethical position: a universality of human rights and the abolition of human cruelty and the restrictions of freedom. However, Spocott contemplates the meaning of ethics, through considerations of concepts such as the meaning of freedom. Her reflections on her visions, her presentation of her visions are the formation of an ethical system, as demonstrated in one of the novel’s key quotations: “I just thank God I ain’t born tomorrow….Ain’t no freedom in it.” (Macbride, 159) This demonstrates that Spocott is able to also think ethically, to contemplate values: this clearly shows the existential depth and strength of her character.

The character of Patty Cannon embodies similar strength, however, within the context of purely corruptive ethical position. Macbride paints Cannon as an intelligent, ambitious woman. She is the owner of the slave house from which Spocott escapes. Cannon, however morally bankrupt, shows a certain creative, willful and strong dimension as part of her character. For example, Macbride describes Cannon as follows: “Anyone who dared intrude on her territory or stalk her stomping grounds simply disappeared.” (Macbride, 22) Thus, Cannon is an autonomous, willful, individual character. But it is precisely this moral bankruptcy that shows the profound gap between her and Spocott. Cannon, despite her individualism, strength and autonomy, cannot think from a radically ethical position. She is restricted to her own selfishness, to her contempt for the lives of others. While driven by her own will power, showing the possibility of a strong female character, it is her inability to form an ethical imperative that renders her existentially weak in comparison to Spocott.

Macbride therefore utilizes two female characters marked with traits such as strength, willfulness, autonomy and ambition in the form of Spocott and Cannon. However, the difference between the two characters lies in their ethical positions and their existential choices. Spocott remains, as her visions indicate, a metaphysical thinker: she thinks in terms of concepts such as freedom and universality, and acts accordingly. Cannon employs her same strengths of character in a non-ethical manner, essentially interested only in her own self-preservation. Her disregard for human life is what ultimately, despite similarities, makes her radically opposed to Spocott’s character. In essence, Macbride demonstrates how similar character traits can lead in two completely different directions, to the extent that a common ethics are forgotten.

Works Cited

Macbride, James. Song yet Sung. New York, NY: Riverhead Books, 2008.