Example Of The Darker Face Of The Earth Essay

Rita Dove’s The Darker Face of the Earth was first published in 1994. Dove takes the basic plot of Sophocles Oedipus Rex and transfers the action to a slave plantation in South Carolina in the 1820s. Oedipus is the story of the man who killed his father, married his mother and, then, realizing what he has done kills his mother and blinds himself in a rage of remorse, shame and guilt. Dove does change key aspects of the original story, but we can also detect the influence of the original ancient Greek play in the choice of some of the characters’ names and in Dove’s use of the slave women to comment on the action they witness - in the manner of the original Greek chorus.
The action begins on the night Amalia, the white wife of the plantation owner, Louis, gives birth to a male baby – who has been fathered by one of the male slaves – Hector. Her husband, Louis, is appalled and filled with rage and disgust; even her doctor, who refuses Louis’ demands to kill the new-born, is adamant that the child must be sent away – because to keep him – the product of love and desire between a white slave owner – would unsettle the balance of power on the plantation and cause a local scandal. Very reluctantly Amalia agrees that her son should be taken from her and adopted.
The action resumes twenty years later in the 1840s when Augustus is bought by Amalia as a slave and delivered to the plantation. Augustus is her son, but she is unaware of this, just as he is unaware that he is returning to the place of his birth or that he has been bought by his mother. Augustus comes with a reputation for being troublesome and rebellious and he reveals in conversation with the other slaves that he has been owned by a British sea captain who has treated him as if he were his son. Indeed, the sea captain had wished for Augustus to be freed on his death, but this plan was foiled by the captain’s brother who sold Augustus back into slavery in the United States. As a consequence Augustus’s vocabulary and level of education, as well as his rebellious reputation, make an immediate impact on the other slaves. He is articulate and well-read and clearly charismatic.
Amalia falls in love with Augustus and seduces him just as she had seduced his father Hector. At the same time, three of the male slaves – Benjamin Skeene, Henry Blake and one simply known as the leader – are plotting a slave rebellion on the plantation. This is historically accurate since the 1840s saw several slave mutinies and revolts in the South, the most famous one being Nat Turner’s.
When the truth is revealed – that Augustus has made love to his own mother, he kills Louis (not his real father, but in a sense his official father) and is prepared to kill his mother, mirroring the Oedipus story, but she has already killed herself. In Dove’s greatest and most important change from the original story, Augustus does not blind himself as Oedipus did. The other slaves, not knowing the truth of what has happened, interpret Augustus’s murder of Louis as the opening act of the slave rebellion and he is carried off stage at the end in a scene of jubilant triumph.