Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo"

Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 2018

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction

Chapters 1-4

Chapters 5-8

Chapters 9-12

Appendix

Key Figures

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Chapters 9-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 9 Summary: “Marriage”

The following day, Hurston picks Kossola up in her car. As they ride, Kossola tells her about an African woman named Abila, who went by the name Seely in the US. Returning to his telling his life story, he explains that this was a woman he wanted to marry. When he asked her if she’d marry him, she agreed, and they were married one month later. Afterward, they converted to Christianity. The church told them that they needed a marriage license, so they got one. Kossola explains that back home in Africa there was no need for a marriage license. Kossola and his wife had five sons and one daughter, all of whom grew up, leaving him lonely. Each of his children received an African name and an alternative American name. He gave each of them his last name, a practice that he says they didn’t have where he was from in Africa. His children faced bullying as they grew up because they were African. This led his sons to get into fights. The people in town complained to Kossola about the boys’ fighting, but he told them that his sons fought only because people were provoking them. The people in Africa Town built a schoolhouse and got a teacher from the county.

Kossola recalls when his daughter, also named Seely, got sick and died at age 15. This was a difficult tragedy for him and his wife to bear. Therefore, they set up a cemetery by the church. At the funeral, the people gathered and sang church songs as well as songs from Africa. Nine years later, one of his sons was shot by a deputy sheriff. The deputy sheriff had hidden in the back of a butcher wagon and jumped out to shoot the boy, claiming that he was afraid the boy would shoot him. Kossola’s son was shot in the neck. Rushing him home and laying him down, Kossola and Seely cried. Although they prayed constantly, he died two days later. Kossola explains that deputy sheriff is now the pastor of Hay Chapel in Plateau. Because of his faith, Kossola has tried to forgive him, but he thinks that the man should ask for forgiveness, since he, too, is now a religious man.

Chapter 10 Summary: “Kossula Learns About Law”

After the death of Kossola’s son, the deputy sheriff that murdered him was never arrested. At that time, Kossola was sick too. He specifically recalls that in March 1902 a woman asked him to plow her field for her. He went early the next morning to plow hers so that he could have time to do his afterward, but Seely scolded him for working and missing breakfast. After he ate, they went together into the field to plant beans. He then went to the market for beans, but there were none to buy. He returned to care for his horse and decided to set out again to try and get beans in Mobile. On his way back home, Kossola was hit by a passing switch-engine train as he crossed the railroad tracks in his buggy and ended up with three broken ribs.

He was taken to a doctor’s office and given morphine. A white woman who saw the accident cared for him as well. When he got back home, she visited him and brought him a gift basket. Because the train hadn’t sounded a bell or blown a whistle of warning, the woman went to make a complaint at the railroad company’s office. They refused to help, so the woman advised Kossola to get a lawyer. Kossola got a lawyer named Clarke and agreed to pay him half of whatever he was awarded. Clarke sued the company for $5,000. Clarke argued that the railroad should be responsible for supporting Kossola financially, as he was seriously injured and couldn’t work anymore. Additionally, he argued that it was unsafe for this track to run right through town, and for it not to ring the bell or sound the whistle. In the end, Kossola was awarded $650. However, although Kossola sent his son to get his half of the money from Clarke, Clarke never handed it over. When yellow fever hit Mobile in 1904, Clarke and his family headed for New York, but he was ill and didn’t survive the journey. Kossola never got his money, but he’s grateful that he survived the accident. Knowing that he couldn’t work anymore, the people in Africa Town made him the church sexton.

Chapter 11 Summary

Returning to the framing narrative, Hurston explains that Kossola’s friends caught many blue crabs. The following day, Hurston returned to Kossola’s house for them to eat the crabs together and talk some more. Kossola starts telling her about his son, David. One day, David went to his mother, saying that he was hungry and wanted to eat. However, Seely reminded him that she always served Kossola first, and she told David to go take a bath and wait until Kossola was ready. Hoping to hurry his father along, David went to help him chop and carry the wood. After dinner, he bathed, but the only clean shirt he had to put on was an undershirt, so David decided he’d go into town to get his laundry. Later, two men came to the house and informed Kossola that David was killed by the train in Plateau. This confused Kossola because David had said he was going to Mobile. Unsure if the dead man was David, Kossola headed to Plateau to investigate. He followed the crowd to find where the body was. In the accident, the man’s head had been severed from his body. When Kossola saw the body, he was in denial, but the head confirmed that it was David.

Kossola’s other son, Poe-lee, was angry and wanted to sue the railroad company. Poe-lee was upset with all the injustice he and his family had experienced in the US and believed that living in Africa would be better. One day, Poe-lee went out to catch fish and they never saw him again. Kossola pauses to cry and mourn over his son’s mysterious disappearance.

After losing Poe-lee, Seely became very sad and was always crying. Kossola and Seely now only had two children left, and only one of them lived at home. Several months later, their son Jimmy came home feeling sick and died shortly afterward. With an empty home, Kossola and Seely did the best they could to carry on. They remained active in the church, and Seely helped Kossola with garden work that was hard on his body.

Kossola allows Hurston to photograph him and then tells her not to return for a few days. She returns one Saturday to take his picture, and he’s wearing his best suit. Following his request, he’s photographed in the cemetery by his family members’ graves.

Chapter 12 Summary: “Alone”

Kossola continues telling his story. One night, Seely woke up, having dreamt that their children were cold. The following day, she insisted that Kossola come with her to visit the children’s graves in the cemetery. He was reluctant because he didn’t want her to worry, but when he tried to distract her by stopping at the church first, she slipped away. He found her later in the cemetery. The following week, Seely died, though she wasn’t sick. The following month, his last living son, Aleck, died as well. He was left with Aleck’s wife and family, to whom Kossola plans to give his land when he dies.

One day, Old Charlie and some others from town came to visit Kossola, as they knew he was lonely. They asked him to tell them a parable. The story he told went as such: One day on the way to church, Old Charlie leans his umbrella against Kossola’s house, seeing that it isn’t going to rain as he expected. After church, he heads straight home, knowing that he can get the umbrella another day from Kossola’s house. He later sends his child to go fetch the umbrella. Narrating this story, Kossola addressed his listeners, asking them if it would be right for him to keep the umbrella for himself because it’s pretty and he’d like it. They all agreed that it wouldn’t be right. Likewise, he explained, his wife belonged to God, and like the umbrella, it was God’s right to take her back home.

They asked for another parable. His next story went as such: One day he and Seely are riding on a train when the conductor asks where she’s getting off. She says Plateau, which confuses Kossola, because she’s supposed to get off at Mount Vernon with him. Although she wants to leave with him, she knows in her gut that she must get off at Plateau. When her stop comes, she leaves sadly.

Hurston’s framing narration returns. She reflects on her time with Kossola. Hurston’s visits with Kossola spanned two months. Sometimes they ate and talked together; sometimes only one or the other. Some days he was eager to chat, and others he was too busy. They became good friends, and both are sad when Hurston had to return to New York. As she leaves, he stands outside his house and watches her go. He sends her away with a peach. Hurston knows that Kossola doesn’t fear death and that he’s in great awe of the past.

Chapters 9-12 Analysis

In Chapter 9, Kossola’s son is shot by a deputy sheriff. While this son was a belligerent young man, known in town for fighting, it’s clear that the shooting wasn’t really in self-defense. Rather, he was targeted by the sheriff deputy, who hid until he could take him by surprise and kill him. While Kossola never says the race of the sheriff deputy outright, he was likely a white man because of his powerful position in law enforcement for that era in US history—and because he was never brought to trial for this crime. This antagonistic racial and power dynamic prefigures the kind of anti-Black police violence that gained serious media attention in the US in the 2010s. While this sad incident mirrors 21st-century social conflicts, it’s also a reminder that law enforcement’s anti-Black violence in the US is a phenomenon with a legacy that reaches back to the nation’s inception. Ever since the country’s early years, many laws (such as the Fugitive Slave Act) have criminalized Black people, and it follows that those enforcing such laws would cause harm to Black individuals and communities. The tragic murder of Kossola’s son is a midpoint in the historical continuity between the era of chattel slavery (Kossola’s youth), the Reconstruction era (when his son was killed), and the present.

Regarding narrative strategy, sometimes Hurston’s framing narrative not only offers context but also directly connects to Kossola’s embedded narrative. For instance, in Chapter 9, Hurston describes what she saw when she drove up to Kossola’s house to pick him up one day. She writes, “His rude walking stick was leaning against the door jamb” (106). At first glance, this detail seems to have no significance, as they don’t even do any walking in that chapter. In fact, they go on a drive. However, the walking stick, as well as the drive into town, foreshadows Kossola’s account in the following chapter. In Chapter 10, Kossola talks about how he came to need that walking stick in the first place. He describes how he was riding in his buggy when a train hit him, breaking his ribs and seriously injuring him. Hurston’s descriptive statement in Chapter 9 even foreshadows the parable that Kossola tells in Chapter 12 about Old Charlie leaving his umbrella leaning up against Kossola’s door because it doesn’t rain as he expected: “But he look at de sky and ‘cide hit ain’ gwine rain so he set it dere by de door an’ go on to church” (127). Hurston’s earlier mention of Kossola’s walking stick “leaning against the door jamb” resembles Old Charlie’s umbrella. In this way, Hurston’s framing narrative not only gives us a physical and temporal context for the telling of Kossola’s life story but also interacts with his story.

This kind of interaction often occurs in embedded narratives: They resonate in some way with the overarching narrative. Kossola’s parable about Old Charlie is a prime example of embedded narratives interacting with each other because the parable constitutes the last of three layers of embedded narrative: Hurston’s framing, Kossola’s life story, and the events in the parable of Old Charlie.

In its final few chapters, Barracoon comes to a sorrowful close. Hurston achieves this through the interaction between Kossola’s embedded narrative, her narration, and the book’s form. First, Kossola recounts how each one of his children and then his wife meets tragic and premature deaths. Periodically, he interrupts his narration to weep or to express that he’s lonely. Emphasizing this, Hurston titles the final chapter “Alone.” Hurston ends the narrative in the time when Kossola’s wife died, leaving readers sad for him. Second, Hurston’s narration steps in with a tone of summary and conclusion: “I had spent two months with Kossula” (128). She shares that over that time, they “became warm friends” (129). After describing the bond they built, and already establishing through the title and Kossola’s narrative that he felt lonely, Hurston reveals that she’s leaving Kossola and heading back to New York. She doubles down on the melancholy tone by describing him as a “lonely figure” (129) watching her leave for the last time. Finally, as Kossola’s embedded narrative described the end of his family members’ lives, and as Hurston’s framing narrative describes the end of her time with Kossola, Barracoon itself reaches an end. These three elements work together to produce an emotionally affecting tone at the end of the book.