45 pages • 1 hour read
Branden Jacobs-JenkinsA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Background
Act Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
Inside the Peyton house, Minnie and Dido are setting up chairs, wondering what the chairs are for and why the house seems so quiet. Minnie remembers another enslaved woman saying goodbye to her last night, and they discuss what that might mean. George enters with Lafouche, an auctioneer, who is complaining about the disorganization of the estate. Looking at a list, Lafouche comments on a crossed-out name, presuming that it must be Paul, who ran away. Pete interjects and asserts that Paul must be dead because no one runs from Terrebonne. Lafouche assumes that Wahnotee must be the killer, noting that the crew on Captain Ratts’s steamboat adored Paul and would lynch Wahnotee on sight. Ratts will be attending the auction to buy someone. To George, Pete questions whether they’re really going to be sold. George replies that Mrs. Peyton had begged him to let the land be sold if it meant he could keep the enslaved people. George has resolved to marry Dora for the sake of Terrebonne.
George tells Pete to inform the other enslaved people of his plan. Dora enters, singing a sad melody. George asks to speak to her. Zoe enters, not yet seen. George awkwardly tries to profess his love to Dora, admitting that he did not initially notice her because he still had feelings for someone else. Dora presses him and is stunned when Zoe confesses that she is the one he loves, adding that Dora should only feel pity for poor, afflicted George. Dora exits, crying. Lafouche approaches George and points out that he forgot to include Zoe on the list of enslaved people, revealing that due to the lien, Zoe’s freedom wasn’t legal. Moreover, McClosky has insisted that she be sold with the estate. George tries to come up with a plan, such as marrying Dora, but Zoe tells him that Dora won’t be interested after their confession. However, Zoe asserts that the kindness shown to her by the Peytons has been more than she could ever deserve already.
Pete enters with Minnie, Dido, and Grace. Emotionally, he lectures the three women that because George tried to sacrifice himself to save them, they should do their best to act happy and fetch a high price at auction. Grace retorts that every other enslaved person has run away, which they have been trying to bring to his attention. Minnie and Dido weren’t told of the escape plan because the other enslaved people thought they were stuck up as “house slaves.” Pete exits in a frenzy. Minnie and Dido lament that they like the Peytons and don’t want to be sold, noting that McClosky literally whips the people he enslaves. Then Minnie convinces Dido that they should persuade Ratts to buy them. They could live on a boat with fresh seafood and well-muscled men. They exit. Time passes and it’s time for the auction. Ratts enters and argues with an audience member over a seat. BJJ, playing both George and McClosky, enters. Lafouche begins the auction, dismayed when the only enslaved people who enter are Pete, Minnie, Dido, and Grace. Pete has donned shackles for some reason, and Minnie and Dido have put on sexier versions of their outfits. In his ear, George explains that the rest escaped.
Lafouche is baffled but forges ahead, starting with Pete, but no one bids because he’s older and disabled. Pete starts to do a sad song and dance before declaring, “You know what? I’m tired of being a slave,” which he quickly follows up with, “Psych!” (44). Finally, George bids and wins Pete for $100. Moving on to Dido, Lafouche is again perplexed as he learns that Dido and Minnie, whom he calls “the property” and “another piece of property” (44) are asking to be sold as a unit. McClosky and Ratts bid against each other, but Ratts wins out. Grace is up next, pregnant and holding a baby, which the stage directions suggest should ideally be played by a white infant wearing blackface. Grace appeals to Ratts, but he doesn’t have enough money, and McClosky outbids him. Then Zoe enters. George and McClosky (both played by BJJ) have a bidding war followed by a knife fight. McClosky outbids George, who has no more money, winning Zoe for $25,000. There is a tableau.
The stage is empty again. Together, BJJ and the Playwright speak to the audience. The Assistant joins them. They explain that BJJ had overestimated what could be done with such limited resources, and the Playwright had underestimated how many white men were called for in Act IV, which is the most significant act for a melodrama. Act IV is the crux of the play—the point at which the different plotlines intersect, the moral of the story becomes apparent, and there’s a sensational spectacle. Since they don’t have the resources to stage this spectacle properly, they will instead describe the fourth act to the audience.
The evening after the auction, Ratts and his men are loading cotton onto his ship. McCloskey enters and “for no reason, except for exposition and to be an asshole” (48), points out that with the enormous load of cotton and the turpentine on board, an engine spark would immolate the ship and everyone on it. There’s a sudden commotion, and Wahnotee has been found. The crowd is ready to lynch him, but George persuades them to give him a trial. They concede that they can spare fifteen minutes. The trial needs an accuser, so the Assistant enlists McClosky, noting that he was the one calling for the lynching. George agrees to defend Wahnotee. He has no evidence to support the defense, but someone brings in George’s smashed camera. BJJ muses that it’s a plot hole (in Boucicault’s play, not his) that George never went back for his camera. They find the photo of McClosky standing over Paul’s body.
BJJ and the Playwright try to explain the significance of the camera as evidence because cameras were so new. Melodramas were always exploiting the latest technology and pushing the boundaries of stagecraft, but it’s hard to explain that kind of awe to a contemporary audience. BJJ toyed with putting the audience in mortal danger and saving them or sacrificing an animal in front of them as a way to evoke a similar emotional response. Instead, he projects a lynching photo onto the wall. Resuming the trial, McClosky is now accused and told to defend himself. McClosky brandishes a knife, which is quickly confiscated by the crowd. They find the letter that McClosky stole. The crowd wants to lynch him, and Wahnotee nearly kills him, but George stops them. Ratts’s men take McClosky to his boat to be locked up until he’s hanged. There’s another commotion as McClosky causes the ship’s cargo to catch on fire and escapes. While fleeing, he runs into Wahnotee, who wrestles and stabs him. No one answers McClosky’s screams as Wahnotee drags him off. The Assistant says, “Then the boat explodes. […] Sensation. (Beat.) Anyway. The point of this whole thing was to make you feel something” (54).
Late that night, Zoe is searching for the enslaved people’s quarters. She finds Dido and addresses her as “Mammy” (55). Zoe asks for a potion that she once gave her for a fever that made her sleep, as someone at the house has a fever and needs it. Zoe asks if drinking it all will kill her, and whether her death would hurt. Dido asks why Zoe is talking about hurting herself, and Zoe admits that she overheard George telling Dora that he would rather see Zoe dead than owned by McClosky. Zoe pleads for help from her “mammy” (55) who raised her, grabbing the potion and running off when Dido tries to refuse.
Dido tells Minnie what happened, especially perturbed that Zoe thought that she was her “mammy,” as if the two women aren’t about the same age. Dido wonders if they ought to tell someone what Zoe is doing, but Minnie advises her to avoid being so involved in what other people do or think about her. She should live for herself. Soon, they’re going to get on a boat and start a new life. Minnie comments, “You know, I would be so pissed if something were to happen that somehow rendered the last twelve hours totally moot” (58). Dido agrees. She asks Minnie to tell her the rest of the story about the rabbit. They exit. Br’er Rabbit meanders in again, this time with a gavel and tomahawk.
The third-act auction of enslaved people was a sensational moment in the original Boucicault melodrama, creating a sometimes comical display out of the fate of the enslaved people of Terrebonne, which culminates with the emotionally charged spectacle of Zoe on the auction block. To audiences, she appeared white, as played by Boucicault’s wife, Agnes Robinson, who was a white actress, and she was the central figure of the audience’s terror and pity. Jacobs-Jenkins’s third act approaches this same event satirically, using metatheatrical gestures to point toward the contradictions in Boucicault’s climactic scene. As the few enslaved characters that have appeared onstage thus far unwittingly setting up chairs for their own auction, the absence of the plantation’s other enslaved workers is explained with the comically flimsy story that they have all run away, which of course obviates the need for a large cast of extras. In an absurd twist, Grace, who is still visibly pregnant and who (as Minnie and Dido acknowledged earlier) is always talking about running away, is still there because she overslept. This is presented as a cosmic reward for her intentional exclusion of Minnie and Dido, whom Grace has already made clear that she doesn’t like.
In the stage directions at the start of the auction, the playwright states, “There is either 1 or 99 people playing various bidders. Or maybe there’s some clever way to force the audience into doing this” (43). Here, as at many points in the play, Jacobs-Jenkins’s stage directions are intentionally vague—pointing toward the absurdly contrived nature of conventional theatrical representations of slavery and plantation life. Audience involvement in the auction, regardless of how involved, is another way in which the play uses metatheatricality to interrogate Theatrical Convention and Racial Representation. Audience members are aware that they are watching a show, but involving them in the auction forces them to take on the culpability of participating in an auction in which human beings are bought and sold. Jacobs-Jenkins leaves it up to the eventual director to determine how and even whether this audience participation should be achieved, but the key word is “forced,” rather than “encouraged” or “invited.” Whatever form this audience participation takes, the expectation is that it should be an uncomfortable experience for the audience.
The comic reward of BJJ taking on the roles of both George and McClosky comes to fruition at the end of this scene when they bid against each other for Zoe. The knife fight leaves BJJ fighting with himself, a comically absurd spectacle that illustrates how little moral distinction there is between the play’s ostensible hero and villain. After all, they’re both bidding to buy a human being.
Although the auction is for all the enslaved people who didn’t run away, Zoe is certainly the centerpiece, especially as she only learns that she is to be auctioned near the start of the scene. Minnie and Dido have pulled a Br’er Rabbit-level trick by convincing Captain Ratts to bid on them so they can go on what they hope will be a new adventure. Pete finds himself unwanted, as the auctioneer guesses that he is 72 years old (which Pete corrects to 46) and notes that he has a physical disability (43). Pete even tries a rather pitiful song and dance to entice bidders, until George wins him for a pity bid of $100. Grace, along with her baby and unborn baby, is purchased by McClosky. The dramatic climax of the act is the bidding for Zoe, a moment that takes on high drama from the threat that she may be bought by the cruel and sexually abusive McClosky, but Jacobs-Jenkins’s version of this scene makes clear the double standard at work here: Grace was already handed the same terrible fate, but there was little pity for her.
On the auction block, the characters are defined and valued by the way they are Performing Constructions of Race. Minnie and Dido exploit stereotypes of Black women’s sexual availability—expectations that were placed on Black women during slavery and the decades of segregation after to excuse the sexually predatory behavior of white men. This promise of sexual convenience is unsurprisingly persuasive to Ratts, a man who spends most of his time out at sea. Grace, desperate to avoid McClosky, tries to convince Ratts to buy her too, but she offers her cooking and cleaning skills. With that and the inclusion of her soon-to-be two infants, Ratts decides he can’t afford her, and she goes to McClosky. Pete seemingly breaks his minstrel show act for a moment to sigh, “You know what? I’m tired of being a slave,” but he immediately reconfirms his commitment to the trope of the happily enslaved person by shouting, “Psych!” (44).
Comedy turns to drama when Zoe is to be auctioned. In Jacobs-Jenkins’s reframing of Boucicault’s play, Zoe’s central role in the tragedy is in itself evidence of the socially constructed nature of race. Her proximity to whiteness is precisely what makes her valuable to both McClosky and George, and from Boucicault’s racist perspective, it is also what makes her enslavement uniquely tragic.
Metatheatricality peaks in Act IV, when BJJ and the Playwright address the audience, and BJJ admits that he lacked the production resources to stage the act. In melodrama, the fourth act is the climax in which the grand spectacle appears, and BJJ’s choice to substitute narrative exposition for on-stage action here flies in the face of both theatrical convention and Boucicault’s own published thoughts on dramaturgy. Jacobs-Jenkins makes a deliberate choice to defy Boucicault’s edict that action must be seen and not described. The mounting intensity and spectacle of the scene, beginning with a lynch mob searching for an innocent man, the producing of the photo as evidence and the capture of the guilty man, peaking with the boat explosion that allows the villain to escape, and ending with Wahnotee, the innocent man, exacting his own violent revenge on McClosky, is designed to invoke emotions and excitement. Jacobs-Jenkins resists those easy pleasures, forcing audiences to consider the events of the scene intellectually rather than becoming absorbed in the drama.
In the original melodrama, the final act centers on Zoe obtaining poison and then dying in George’s arms, her selfless death allowing George to fall in love with Dora, who is the only suitable partner for him. But in An Octoroon, the focus shifts to Minnie and Dido, who haven’t learned yet that Terrebonne is saved but Captain Ratts’s ship is so much driftwood. Zoe is also unaware of these developments, and she goes to Dido for the poison, running off with it after Dido learns her intentions. Zoe demonstrates how much she has distanced herself from the other enslaved people on the plantation when she mistakes Dido for the much older “mammy” who raised her. When Dido wonders what she should do about Zoe’s suicidal intentions, Minnie advises her to focus on her own life and take care of herself instead of feeling responsible for others. The play stays with Minnie and Dido, leaving Zoe’s fate is unknown and therefore unperformed as spectacle.