Just a few quick things I wanted to throw out there for the group:
William Fly
Fly’s narrative is titled, “The vial poured out upon the sea.” What does that mean? The phrase comes from the Book of Revelation.
Fly & crew reportedly rechristened the ship Fame’s Revenge. What might that mean? I asked my wife what she thought the title Fame’s Revenge suggested, and she said Lindsay Lohan.
Joseph Mountain
The narrative switches from first to third person at points. It feels like a mistake, although I may be misunderstanding something. Like the other stories that were “taken from the mouth of…” I’m sure it was written by someone else.
There’s something about the phrase, “a rape was committed on the body of a white girl” (p. 303) – the way it’s stated feels impersonal in a way. Something that happened on her body seems orders of magnitude less than something done to her – like it’s property damage instead of personal violation. Does that say something about the sexism of the times? Or something about the way they thought of body and soul? Or maybe it’s just the way they said things.
Thomas Powers
In the notes to A Mixed Race: Ethnicity in Early America, it says, “”As a rhetorical strategy intended to provide white readers with an ideological context to view the characters, racial epithets were commonly used on title pages.” Why were Powers and Mountain identified by race right up front, and Patience Boston’s ethnicity barely alluded to?
