Insight Text Guide

Ross Huggard

The Longest
Memory
Fred D’Aguiar
Copyright © Insight Publications 2011
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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Huggard, Ross.
Fred D’Aguiar’s The Longest Memory / by Ross Huggard.
9781875882106 (pbk.)
Insight text guide.
For secondary school age.
Huggard, Ross, The Longest Memory.
823.914

Printed in Australia by Ligare

contents

Character map iv

Overview 1
About the author 1
Synopsis 1
Introduction 4

Background & context 7

Genre, structure & language 15

Chapter-by-chapter analysis 20

Characters & relationships 37

Themes, ideas & values 51

Questions & answers 61

References & reading 67

iv In s i g h t T e x t G u i d e

character map

Sanders Junior
Unaware that Chastises Mr Whitechapel
Legitimate Chapel is his Plantation
Sanders Senior son of half-brother; owner; has a
Slave overseer; fearful of slaves. ‘humanitarian’
desperate widower approach to his
with one son; t slaves.
ou f
unable to control ab ss o

Despises
s
lust for Cook. rie ne
or us
W ellio
reb

Criticise
Rapes

es
Illegitimate son of

Lydia

u
val
Daughter of
Cook

and
plantation owner;
Retains her dignity; falls in love with Plantation owners

res
becomes integral the slave Chapel. Self-serving,

mi
to plantation house self-righteous and
Ad
Kills

and family. wary of danger of

Admires

M rebellious slaves.
an arr
d l ies
ov ire
e
worries about

lov

es m
Ad
Loves and

Overtly supports
en
idd

Co

Whitechapel
b

rre ith
For

Central voice;
spo
w

his embodies the

n

es n’ ‘loyal slave’;
ds

Lov y ‘so
l integral to the
Chapel on
stability of the
Taught to read by plantation. Editor of The
Lydia; learning Virginian
creates agitation; Provides
mixed race. justifications for
Cares for

the actions of the

H plantation owners.
o
flo rrifi
gg ed
in b
g y
of
Great grandmother/
granddaughter
Tends to the aged
Whitechapel.
Observes his decline
after the fatal
whipping of Chapel.
 1

OVERVIEW

About the author

Born in 1960 in London to Guyanese parents, Fred D’Aguiar lived in
Guyana until he was twelve, returning to the UK in 1972. He read
African and Caribbean Studies at the University of Kent, graduating in
1985. D’Aguiar soon established a firm reputation as an important British
poet, novelist and playwright. The Longest Memory was his first novel,
published in 1994.

Synopsis
Remembering: Old Whitechapel, speaking in the first person, experiences
the painful impact of allowing himself to remember the death of his son
Chapel and his complicit part in those events.
Whitechapel: Whitechapel begins the story central to the novel,
recalling the first morning after Chapel’s terrible death. He admits that he
was wrong to give his son up to Sanders for punishment and reflects that
he deserves to be called a betrayer like the Biblical Judas. We learn that
he has buried two wives, many children and his only son. He recounts
the death of his second wife and his desire for death to relieve him of his
suffering.
Mr Whitechapel: This is the voice of the plantation owner who
believes he treats his slaves humanely. He is speaking to Whitechapel,
his Deputy, and his Overseer, Mr Sanders. He reprimands Whitechapel
for not containing ‘his son’s anarchic spirit’ (p.28) for now he will have a
plantation of disgruntled slaves. He then accuses his overseer of spreading
discontent among the slaves, being negligent of his duty by being absent
and of ignoring his orders to hold Whitechapel’s son – in short he sees
him as responsible for Chapel’s death (see p.31) and he fines him. He
informs Sanders that his father raped Whitechapel’s second wife. Sanders
has therefore whipped and killed his own brother (in fact his half-brother).
2

We can discern that Sanders did not know this. This chapter is important
in revealing past information and the way Whitechapel’s long memory
links them to that past so that it cannot simply be forgotten. It shows the
less humane attitudes of Mr Whitechapel – his concern for his reputation
with other plantation owners and his disregard for Chapel’s suffering
when he reprimands Sanders for losing a slave on economic grounds.
Sanders Senior: He was a slave overseer on the plantation and his
story comes to us through his journal entries. These include his attraction
to the new slave, Cook. He rapes her twice – once before her marriage
to Whitechapel when he impregnates her and again brutally after the
wedding. He is fined for the rape and forced to marry a woman he detests
in order to protect the plantation from gossip and unrest. The reader now
has to reconsider Whitechapel’s references to Chapel as his only son.
We learn that Sanders Senior has also whipped a young runaway slave
200 times.
Cook: Speaking with childlike simplicity, Cook recounts her pain
but mainly focuses on her love for her husband Whitechapel who
married her even though she was pregnant to another man. Her love and
appreciation of Whitechapel’s strengths reinforce others’ respect for and
praise of Whitechapel in earlier chapters.
Chapel: Chapel’s only chapter is related in poetic form. Whitechapel
never beat him, his mother gave him much love, and the master’s
daughter taught him to read but swore him to secrecy. Her father
discovered them and he was whipped and told to tell no one for his
parents’ sake. He acquiesces but continues to meet Lydia at night. He
becomes increasingly critical of Whitechapel. He would have run away
except that his mother falls ill with fever and he helps nurse her until her
death. He then has nothing to hold him to the plantation – he feels joy
that he is finally leaving.
Plantation Owners: This chapter is the second time Mr Whitechapel
speaks. The title of the chapter directs us to see the broader picture –
the plantation owners and their attitudes to the problems that beset
Mr Whitechapel. Italics indicate Mr Whitechapel’s fears and thoughts,
The L o n g e s t M e m o r y 3

followed in ordinary text by his responses. This internal monologue then

moves into a dialogue with other plantation owners. Mr Whitechapel
feels that he has atoned himself by going to his club, an act which shows
his need for approval and forgiveness from his peers and his nervousness
that they might reject him as an abolitionist in the precarious political
climate.
Lydia: Lydia describes her first encounters with, and impressions of,
Chapel when he was only a child. She teaches him to read and write – he
agrees to secrecy because he is so keen to learn. Why does his mother
shorten his name to Chapel? The apparently simple answer disguises a
truth that the reader knows but that Chapel and Lydia do not.
Cook: Chapel’s mother sees him reading to Lydia and is so terrified
she has to stifle screams and run back to her kitchen, but she is proud
despite the dangers she recognises. She does not reprimand him and
resolves not to tell Whitechapel. She communicates her love through her
cooking to compensate for her secret.
Lydia: Lydia recounts the day she and Chapel are reading and her
father enters the room; we can now contrast her version of the incident
with Chapel’s. She realises that she loves Chapel even though he is three
years her junior. We also learn that Cook sows the idea of the two of
them meeting in the dark (p.89) which Lydia later follows. They meet
and Chapel keeps his word not to read and write again by having
Lydia memorise passages of literature and record his own writing. They
continue to meet on starlit nights and declare their love for each other.
Lydia: Lydia recounts the demands that are made on her as she
moves into adulthood highlighting her ‘coming out’ with its emphasis
on deportment, appearances and marriage, but she is miserable, thinking
of and needing Chapel. She tries to plan for them to meet in the North
where slaves are free but she makes the mistake of suggesting that her
mother accompany her. They meet and dream of the life they will have
together, with Chapel writing verses to earn a living.
The Virginian: This chapter uses the editorials in 1809 and 1810
of the newspaper of the title to present the arguments whites used to
4

justify slavery. This gives the reader access to the wider cultural context
of slavery and the thinking that colours the attitudes of the characters
depicted. In this way some of the major issues raised in this novel are
debated here. Lydia’s defence of slaves becoming literate is praised for
its intelligence but her support for liaisons between white women and
African men is rejected as scandalous.
Great Grandmother: Despite the title, this is the voice of Whitechapel’s
great granddaughter who dreams of Africa. Because she has believed
Whitechapel to be infallible, she is confused by Whitechapel’s revelation
of Chapel’s whereabouts to the master, clearly an act of betrayal, and not a
protective act as he claims. Her pained experience of the whipping results
in the death of her dreams of Africa. She also describes Whitechapel’s
pain and withdrawal from virtually everyone after the event. At the end
of this section we learn that old Whitechapel has finally died; his great
granddaughter is asked to help wash his body but has to be taken from
the room.
Sanders Junior: Sanders is speaking to the now-dead Whitechapel –
thinking aloud about his mistake in hitting him, apologising for killing
his son, refusing to believe Chapel is his brother. He cannot understand
Whitechapel’s thinking and, shockingly, we learn that Whitechapel
misguidedly ordered the number of lashes.
Forgetting: Whitechapel’s last reflections before his death. He
imagines that he is speaking to his son, trying to make peace in his
mind for his inadequacy as a father and his failure which he admits; he
knows that Chapel is involved with Lydia; he admits that Chapel has ‘two
races ... distributed evenly in [his blood]’ (p.136). He welcomes death in
order to forget. ‘Memory is pain trying to resurrect itself’ (p.138).

Introduction
Frank D’Aguiar’s novel, The Longest Memory, recounts the story of the
slave Whitechapel whose remarkable and long life straddles the 18th and
19th centuries. His white master, Mr Whitechapel, and his fellow African
The L o n g e s t M e m o r y 5

slaves perceive him to be the elder statesman of the slaves – a man of

wisdom and insight.
While Whitechapel the slave is at the centre of this novel, the book
is written from a number of viewpoints. It offers a series of accounts of
life on the Whitechapel plantation in Virginia in the late 1700s and early
1800s with its focus on the circumstances of the whipping to death of
Chapel, a young runaway slave.
The plot is not unfolded in strict chronological sequence, reminding
us of the way in which the past (and our recollection of it in our memories)
so often determines and influences the present and future in the complex
tapestry of our lives. Through both Whitechapel and the plantation
owners, it becomes clear that the living link between the past and their
present is the old slave himself, who has been symbolically and shrewdly
named after the current plantation owner’s father. He has observed first-
hand the way in which the social and economic system of slavery has
evolved through almost a century. He is like a living time capsule, an
agent of memory. If, as Mr Whitechapel asserts to his non-conformist
daughter, Lydia, it may be ‘the next century’ (p.88) before she and her
beloved Chapel can ‘sit and read together’, many more memories will
need to be created before slavery truly can end.
This white-controlled and dominated society of Virginia, in the Deep
South of North America, became wealthy due to its abundant slave
workforce who so cheaply and efficiently harvested their cotton crops.
At the time, such slavery was considered essentially justifiable as African
people were seen to be both morally and intellectually inferior, and thus
of a lower and less-civilised order. Indeed, many whites even believed
that they were doing the ‘poor unfortunate blacks’ a favour by ‘civilising’
them and converting them to Christianity to save their souls. These slaves
were sold at auctions as ‘stock’, had absolutely no rights as human beings
and could essentially be treated by their purchasers as they chose. The
children of slaves were legally owned by the masters of their mothers,
and were typically forced into various forms of manual work from a
tender age.
6

It is important to put the events of this text into historical context. They
prefigure the events of the American Civil War, which occurred around
50 years later (1861–1865), giving subtle hints of the disquiet that would
fuel much of the warring between the Southern (Confederate) States and
the Northern (Union) States. The practice of slavery was a key trigger for
the Civil War, as so much of the wealth and power of the rural South
depended unashamedly upon the use of slaves. In the novel, the fact that
Chapel is half black and half white (as the natural offspring of Cook who
was raped by Sanders Senior), makes him a logical vehicle to challenge
the existing system. How could such a young man be expected to accept
such a racist and unjust system?
A time-honoured mechanism for controlling others deemed less
worthy or important is to keep them ill-educated and illiterate. Today we
may not perceive the ability to read and write to be special and yet for
millions in developing countries even today, a lack of literacy continues
to be an enormous barrier to progress and independence. So it was for
slaves in the Deep South – they were consciously kept illiterate, since it
was presumed that they were inferior beings. Therefore, when Lydia, the
daughter of the plantation owner (Mr Whitechapel), teaches Chapel to
read and write, she contravenes a basic principle. That Chapel becomes
so proficient in his command of language that he relishes great literary
works and even writes his own poetry is both ironic and revealing.
In the end, it seems, only the use of physical brutality, and even
murder, will keep these slaves ‘in their proper place’. Yet, it is clear to us
that slavery is not destined to last much longer; a fact even recognised
by the controlling whites as represented by the plantation owners and
the editor of their paper, The Virginian. Chapel’s gruesome death will
not stem the flow of agitation or the talk of abolitionists (those who
advocated that slavery be abolished and outlawed). Old Whitechapel’s
own pathetic death seems to signal the end of an era and register change
to the prevailing social order.