69 pages • 2 hours read
Alex HaleyRoots: The Saga of an American Family
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1976A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Brutality of the Slave Trade and Its Enduring Legacy
Content Warning: This section contains graphic depictions of enslavement, including violence, sexual assault, and death associated with slavery. The source material contains frequent use of racial slurs and racist language, which are reproduced in this guide only through quoted material.
Roots contains detailed, gruesome acts of violence, and the inclusion of these acts develop a theme in which the inhumanity of slavery is exposed from the direct, human perspective of enslaved Black characters. As Haley describes his search for more information on his family, he notes how, after dinner, he climbed into the “deep, dark, cold cargo hold” (726), stripping off his clothes and imagining what Kunta could “see, hear, feel, smell, taste” (726), and think. Writing from the perspective of “human cargo” allows Haley to depict the oppression and violence of the slave trade in the first-person perspective. However, the lasting legacy of slavery is the oppressive alienation of Black peoples from their own heritage and culture, which transcends violence without overshadowing it.
When Kunta arrives on John Waller’s plantation, he notes his hatred for the other Black people he sees, thinking: “These black ones had never known what it meant to sweat under the sun not for toubob masters but for themselves and their own people” (239), highlighting the critical difference between slavery and freedom. In Kunta’s experience, people work to maintain their sense of self and their community, identifying with their trade, providing for their families, and contributing to a broader collection of people sharing their common culture and heritage. Slavery strips that fundamental connection away by taking all the effort and labor that should be used to build identity and community and diverting it into sustaining an oppressive ruling class. Even as white people in Roots complain about their financial and social responsibilities, the disconnect lies in how identity is formed through personal responsibility, which enslaved people are denied.
The legacy of slavery, then, is expressed through both Chicken George and his son, Tom. As Murray tells George that he cannot stay on the plantation, he says “I know it don’t seem fair to you” (659), citing that “the law is the law” (659). George’s response—that it should not seem fair to anyone—highlights a lasting issue in the fight for equality and equity; many people cannot understand that what is unfair to them would also be unfair to marginalized groups. The impact of such misunderstanding is expressed in Tom’s continued distrust and dislike of white people, even after slavery is abolished, as white people, through laws and social conventions, continue to interrupt and disrupt Black people’s efforts toward rebuilding identity and community.
The Crossroads Between Oral and Written History
Oral history dominates Roots, while written history is seen alternately as dangerous, oppressive, and outright inaccurate. Oral history preserves the traditions and stories of families and cultures in a way that fortifies a sense of self and of group identity, shown through griots in Africa, late-night gatherings of enslaved people discussing bits of news, and finally, through the construction of Roots itself, through the investigation of a family narrative. Written history, on the other hand, presents a risk, linked to the dominance of the ruling class as phrased in the novel’s final words: “preponderantly the histories have been written by the victors” (729). The histories of marginalized peoples are often contained in the stories and traditions they hold, and Roots shows how these oral histories can preserve lineage and culture despite suppression.
In Africa, oral history is linked with griots, who travel from village to village telling the stories of African history; written history, limited to religious texts, is promptly linked with violence, as the second kafo boys are beaten when they cannot read and write correctly. In a sense, writing is seen as a necessary, if difficult, component in becoming an adult, while oral history is celebrated in gatherings, feasts, and festivals. In America, writing becomes a liability, as Bell is forced to hide her ability to write, and Kizzy is ultimately sold because of her ability to forge a document for Noah. Kunta notes how “these blacks shared some kind of communication known only among themselves” (245), including gestures, words, and songs intended to verbally communicate without the risk of white interference. This need for secrecy is tied to a need for impermanence. Written communication can be found, deciphered, and used against the writer, while oral communication is ephemeral, achieving its purpose without detection.
The strength of oral history is established in the existence of Roots itself, as Haley describes how the stories of a man named “Kin-tay,” who “say de guitar a ‘ko’” and “de river ‘Kamby Bolongo” (710), transformed into a broad-spanning novel of seven generations of the Kinte family. Inaccuracies, such as thinking “Kamby Bolongo” refers to a river in Virginia, or the loss of Kunta’s first name, pale in comparison to the foundations built on Kunta’s story to develop a sense of history and identity for Haley’s family. Haley feels embarrassed checking written documents to confirm the griot’s story, but the novel serves as a written counterpoint to traditionally white, male histories that omit stories like Kunta’s due to their lack of representation in historic written documents.
Black and Familial Identity in the Wake of the Slave Trade
Between the legacy of slavery and the maintenance of oral history, Black and familial identity retains elements of African ancestry and the cultures that developed in America during enslavement. Kunta notes that the Black people he sees on Waller’s plantation, though they “wouldn’t understand drumtalk,” “some of the things they did were purely African” (243), such as their gestures, facial expressions, and laughter. Even without knowledge of their heritage, these traits remain, transferred by parents and friends in the early period of the slave trade and retained into Kunta’s present. Recurring elements linking Black Americans to African culture reflect the retention of traditions and behaviors that reach back farther in a family’s history than memory alone can.
The pursuit of freedom forms a critical aspect of the Kinte family’s development, as Chicken George tells a young Tom: “Make dis family ‘mount to sump’n! Us all git up Narth, raisin’ chilluns an’ gran’chilluns free, like folks was meant to!” (589). Freedom, broadly, reflects the idea of owning oneself, rather than being owned by someone else, but in the specific context of Black familial identity, it relates more to the family as an independent unit. Under slavery, the characters’ last names change with their plantation, eliminating an important component of family identity. In asserting that the family “’mount to sump’n,” George is highlighting how the family can become its own unit, separate from the white families that have owned them, while also carrying the freedom that will allow men like Tom, Will, and Haley to follow their own paths to success.
The transference of resistance to oppression forms a substantive foundation to Black identity as freedom becomes a reality, continuing a fight against discrimination. When Tom encounters Cates after the Civil War, he gets him a drink, noting: “The only reason I brought you this water is because I’d bring any thirsty man a drink, not because you hollered” (684), cultivating a sense of unity and kindness despite decades of violence. Just as the family helps George and Martha Johnson, the Black identity in Roots includes solidarity among the oppressed, regardless of background. When Tom asserts that he would “bring any thirsty man a drink,” he does so regardless of skin color, reflecting the desire for equality and equity for all people. Between these ideas, of freedom and unity, the Black identity is founded within resistance to slavery, oppression, and violence.
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By Alex Haley
